There is essentially nothing to praise in this entire film other than a single action scene which very easily falls into "so bad it's good territory."
The acting is very wooden. None of the characters in the film have any charisma, and the few token white people in the film constantly chew up the scenery, almost like they're doing a satirical imitation of stereotypical Bollywood acting and the director missed it or something. There is a dizzying array of characters, and the only important ones in the grand scheme of things are the truck driver and the hitchhiker. The rest of the cast serve as plot devices, simple comedy, or time-wasters.
The special effects are among the worst ever put to film. Muzzle flashes and bullet effects are sloppily put in with After Effects, and look worse than they did in Goldeneye for the Nintendo 64. The car green screen effects are as terrible as they were in the early James Bond films of the 60s, with camera shake failing to match the vehicle, the backgrounds being blown up, blurry, and with giant jagged pixels, and the other cars being a fraction of the size of the rotoscoped vehicle in the scenes.
Drone shots are in reduced resolution and framerate, making such scenes jarring and awkward to look at. Many scenes are in standard definition and are very painful on the eyes, having to watch a VHS quality scene blown up to the size of the big screen.
The editing compounds these issues and makes them worse than any one person could ever imagine. Sound design is practically non-existent, with many lines of dialogue being completely masked, rendering subtitles mandatory even for native speakers. ADR is apparent in many scenes, as characters lines commonly fail to sync up to lip movements throughout the film. There are insane cuts which are seizure-inducing, even to those without epilepsy, with many rapid cuts between different shots and black frames. The subtitles are horrible and barely comprehensible at times, with many grammatical errors and odd phrases like "Get down" being used for "Get out," which led me to believe there was some innuendo there when there wasn't. There's also use of very archaic words, such as "tresses," which was odd since it was a term I wasn't even familiar with prior despite being a former English major, and it's always worrying when an inexperienced writer uses terms that even many English speakers wouldn't be familiar with. There's inconsistent framerates at certain parts, likely due to stretching scenes out to try to make them more dramatic, but at times when abused to extreme levels it results in a slideshow effect. There's also a scene in which the transparency is reduced on a daytime scene, giving it an ugly blackened look to it in an attempt at pseudo film noir.
The writing is appalling. This film tries to be a dramatic romantic comedy, yet fails to ever do any two simultaneously, and never manages to accomplish any one effectively. The film almost feels like three short films within a film, with the first involving the grandfather being the most interesting part of the movie but still rather dull and uninteresting and not satisfyingly integrated with the main story. The film tries at many times to be a comedy as most Bollywood films seem to do, but fails at every point, as I only ever chuckled during what was intended to be serious dramatic moments or cool action scenes. The drama isn't dramatic as the film is so tonally inconsistent it at one point ends a scene of the aftermath of a mass murder with a cheery-sounding song, and awkward attempts at comedic dialogue. There is not a chance for getting invested because the film is constantly working to undo what it sets up as it sets it up. The ending in particular is the most unforgivable part of the movie to the point where I cannot even describe it beyond saying it might as well just be a man coming out from behind the set and breaking the fourth wall by holding a single finger high up in the air towards the camera for a full minute as the credits roll. If you've ever seen a romcom, it's the exact opposite of the ending that each of them have.
The soundtrack is way too varied and random to be meaningful or effective. Dramatic scenes are filled with some of the most chilling horror music to be put to film, and the many music video sequences are plagued with simplistic repetitive choruses, drum beats, and synth notes. There is not a single stand-out song in the whole film despite the film basically being a musical even more so than most cliche low-energy Bollywood films. The soundtrack quite simply is best when it fades into the background rather than pounding in my head giving me a migraine headache.
The 132 minute running time is an absolute joke and could have easily been cut down to a more acceptable 90 minutes by cutting out redundant plot elements between the backstory sequences, removing all of the awful dramatic slowdown sequences, and not letting characters ad-lib scenes for 5 minutes at a time.
This isn't the worst film of 2018, but that's hardly an accomplishment when this has likely been the worst year for film in history, even worse than those years before filmmaking existed. I have currently watched 161 2018 films, and it ranks as 6th worst, beaten only by Game Over, Man!, Shopkins Wild, Avengers of Justice: Farce Wars, Slender Man, and Show Dogs. What makes this film stand out is that it somehow manages to be among the worst without being offensive for its behind-the-scenes practices, its uncreative concept, its abhorrent themes, or its shameless marketing attempts. This film is horrific based on the filmmaking alone.
