Meet three neighbours who hate each other.

The reason?

Their nayee padosan (new neighbour), Pooja (Mahek Chahal).

As far as Raju (Anuj Sawhney) is concerned, it's love at first sight.

Raja (Aslam Khan), who also happens to be Pooja's collegemate, loses his heart to her when she beats him in a music competition and follows it up with a lecture on the undeniable attractions of classical music.

Ram (Vikas Kalantri), on the other hand, has come to Mumbai to become an actor. A soothsayer tells him he won't succeed until he finds a girlfriend whose name begins with 'Poo'. So he too jumps on to the 'woo Pooja' bandwagon.

The daft trio begin to pursue their neighbour only to discover she has a childhood friend Prabhu (Rahul Bhat), who is a fellow Tamilian.

Prabhu, who wears the traditional Tamilian dhoti, is a black belt in karate and an excellent classical singer who seems to enjoy baiting Pooja's troika of suitors.

That, in a nutshell, is Nayee Padosan.

The most positive aspect in this attempt at comedy is that ultimate question: who gets the girl?

Mahek, Rahul, Vikas, Aslam and Anuj try really hard to deliver a decent performance. They even succeed at times.

The rest of the film is a letdown.

Ikram Akhtar's script has nothing in common with the classic 1968 comedy Padosan (Sunil Dutt, Kishore Kumar, Mehmood, Saira Banu). It is filled with flaws. For example, Pooja is portrayed as a traditional Tamilian and a strict vegetarian, but she has no qualms wearing skimpy clothes.

Composers Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy's average score cannot hold a candle to R D Burman's unforgettable tunes in the Mehmood classic.

Director B H Tharunkumar could have done justice to Nayee Padosan had he settled for a tighter script. Instead, the film is a drag.

CREDITS
Cast: Rahul Bhatt, Vikas Kalantri, Aslam Khan, Anju Sawhney, Mahek Chahal
Director: B H Tharunkumar
Producer: Nitin Manmohan
Music: Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy
Lyrics: Sameer
Story, Screenplay: Ikram Akhtar
Cinematographer: K Rajkumar