In return, Bollywood has destroyed our ability to think once confronted by it and taught us how to truly enjoy a story – without any perspective whatsoever. Rational thought is for those miserable beings who prefer life burdened by iffy things like logic. Had I seen that movie someplace other than the freezing and very uncomfortable floor of my friend’s studio, it is entirely possible that I too would have been sucked in by the sheer romance of loving thine enemy. Thine murdering, lying, drunk-driving, stalking enemy with the pretty, pretty face.

And this is what Farhan Akhtar counts upon when you sit down to watch his movie. Don the Younger is a stylishly executed psychological exercise on a grand scale. It takes everything you know about the movies, especially Bollywood movies, as well as all you think you know about Don the Older and stands it on its head. I love it.

Oh, the movie taken by itself has several flaws, chief among them the Jasjit subplot that drags the running time down by several extra minutes that the rest of the script patently disapproves of. In Don the Older, one went along with it because there was a certain charm to seeing Pran dressed in tights and making like the Namrata Joshi’s review in Outlook, bemoaning the lack of Shah Rukh’s manly chest in the pool a la Amitabh Bachchan’s furry one. I suddenly realized that that’s the scene that establishes how close the two have been getting to each other. By contrast, in Don the Younger, you feel just as surprised as Vijay when Roma first throws herself at his chest.

Paradoxically, however, the subtle twist of scenes such as that one is also why I loved this movie even though I care nothing at all for the genre and regard all remakes with a suspicious eye.

Not because I’m opposed to their existence per se or view it as a sign of creative paucity as some people have suggested, but because I think they’re more trouble than they are worth. You need to love the material enough, and disagree with its execution just as much, to want to do it all over again. Chances are that if the above two conditions are true, then you’ll end up destroying the very thing that caught your interest in the first place in an attempt to bring everything else up to its level.

Once in a while, the cosmos will smile and you’ll get The Thomas Crown Affair or Kohra. What you’re much more likely to get, however, is Bewitched.