Subhash Ghai´s pre-release assertions that his latest magnum opus, Yaadein, is a "masterpiece" could not be further from the truth. Forget laughable, his claim is downright idiotic. Gone are the days when the ´showman´ used to gift us memorable and entertaining cinema like Karz, Hero, Ram Lakhan, Khal Nayak and Pardes. Taal´s frivolity was unbearable, but having last year IPOed his production company, Mukta Arts, Ghai now makes a film that sloppily argues against the pursuit of money and declares family is more important.

We’re in England, and Raj Puri (Jackie Shroff) is a recent widower, trying to raise his three marriageable daughters as friends, per the last wishes of his departed wife Shalini (Rati Agnihotri). After middle-child Sonia pulls a late-night partying and boozing binge on Papa, he trucks off with the kids to “pure and sweet” India, where none of the above ever apparently happens. Next comes the quick marriages of the two elder offspring, the first courtesy a web-based sevice called shaadi.com - which I verified actually exists – and the next due to the recurring trouble-maker child’s self-inflaming threats.

It’s an interesting enough tale and one that could have been most appealing, but these are really just sub-plots to the key ghissi-pitti story of rich versus poor and the trials of love. Raj’s youngest child Isha (Kareena Kapoor), after years of declaring herself above the entertainment (?!?!) purposes of love, falls for Richie-Rich, aka Ronit Malhotra (Hrithik Roshan), dad’s good friend and surrogate son. (Good Lord. Not again.) But the Puri’s – no, not the edible variety – are middle-class (albeit with two mansion-sized homes around the world) and Raj has already betrothed Ronit to a billionaire Indian American family, as part of his uncle’s mega-business merger. Hence, there are compilations galore.

The key actors in this concoction don’t even realize that the director has lost his desire to make good films. Jackie Shroff, Hrithik Roshan and Kareena Kapoor each give laudable performances that breathe life into their characters. Jackie once again steals the movie from his co-stars with his most believable, doting dad. And Hrithik demonstrates considerable untapped comedic potential in several (unnecessary) sequences. (David Dhawan, are you listening?) Kareena is getting better with the dramatic medium, but she cries most unconvincingly and often copies her more talented elder sister’s dialogue delivery style.

Kabir Lal’s cinematography and Saroj Khan’s choreography are also excellent. The latter beautifully captures the sights and lights of unexplored regions in England, India and Malaysia. Of course, I have a feeling Lal knew we’d be bored, especially during the preposterous “rescue the heroine from the lazy alligators” sequence on Tuba Island, so he threw in some nice visuals for us to marvel at instead.

Where exactly, you must be wondering, does Ghai falter? Quite specifically, it is the flick’s overt materialism, lack of soul and unoriginal supporting characters that bore us to death. For a film that so harshly rejects materialism, particularly in its ridiculous climax, this one is loaded with product placement after product placement. After Mukta Arts’ public placement and his lethally expensive music and theatrical rights for Yaadein, Ghai is rolling in the money even before this movie’s release.

Yet to mint a few more crores, he has canned long, continual and offensive scenes integrating Coke, Hero Cycles, cdguru.com and Pass-Pass into the movie. (As if they have not already got enough mileage, I am stupidly giving them more publicity in this review.) There should be some kind of penalty for insulting the audience’s intelligence with five-minute long candy advertisements in the middle of a film, and repeatedly declaring that a cola helps you think, or connect with a dead loved-one. Why are we even paying to watch advertisements on the big screen?

Even when there’s an opportunity to tug at the audience’s heart-strings, Ghai completely defuses the impact with another shot of the infamous white cola stripe against a red backdrop. True, Hollywood has been integrating product ads with cinema for eons, but they tend to do it seamlessly and intelligently. Ghai does not seem to know the meaning of these words. Loud and stupid, alternately, he most obviously understands. Further witness the ineffective Shalini death scene, where she gets side-swiped by a car, is left for dead by British police (!?!?) and ends with an ode to Dilip Kumar´s unforgettable "Are Bhai... koyi hai" scene from Yash Chopra´s Mashaal.

Of course, when you are not being bombarded with the commercials or stupidity, you have the pleasure of enduring Ghai’s film families from Pardes and Taal all over again. Hello, is this not supposed to be a different movie? Then why are the supporting actors repeated again this time? (Maybe a 3-film package discount Ghai got from these actors?) Heck, they’re even playing the exact same characters. Amrish Puri and Ronit’s mother, of note, are simply transplants of their earlier Ghai flick characters. Originality be damned.

I honestly think Ghai has lost his heart. He never has, and hopefully never will be, a bad director, but Yaadein is a film he has directed with a singular, selfish focus of making money. (And there, he has already succeeded.) Shroff, Roshan and Kapoor’s do their best to make us forget this fact, but it is without the director’s support. Subhash Ghai, in the 1980s, would have ensured Yaadein contained innumerable “memories to cherish”. Today’s Subhash Ghai makes sure it stinks. And tomorrow’s Subhash Ghai would have probably titled the movie “www.coke.com”. After all, life’s all about money, no?