Posted by: Shilpa Jamkhandikar (Reuters Blog)

Warner Brothers did get one thing right.

‘Hari Puttar - A Comedy of Terrors’ does have similarities to a children’s film - not ‘Harry Potter’, but ‘Home Alone’.

A child alone at home, two bumbling goons out to get him and whole scenes lifted from Chris Columbus’s very popular Home Alone.

Unfortunately, neither does child actor Zain Khan come close to matching Macaulay Culkin’s infectious charm, nor does director Lucky Kohli come close to making his film as tight and watchable as ‘Home Alone’ was.

There is hardly any need to narrate the plot - it is exactly the same as ‘Home Alone’ with some minor changes.

Hari’s father is scientist who, we are told, is developing an ultra secret chip that will help the Indian Army fight terrorism (yes, don’t expect any originality from the filmmakers here.)

His mother, played by Sarika, punishes him in front of his cousins and bossy elder brother for spilling “chicken tikka” all over the dining table. (The “chicken tikka” is pizza in the original film).

He sleeps in the attic and next morning his family forgets to take him along on a holiday. Hari is left all alone at home with his cousin Tuk Tuk for company (played by Swini Khara).

Enter two goons, who want to steal that all important chip from the house. Of course, you know how this one ends.

Kohli doesn’t even attempt to come up with new tricks in this film. Even the pranks Zain plays on the goons to stop them from entering the house are straight lifts from HA.

Maybe I am harping a bit too much on the similarities between the two films, but that is because they are so obvious. And the worst part is, even with such a good source of inspiration Hari Puttar doesn’t turn out to be half as entertaining as it should be.

None of the performances are up to the mark, the pranks all look contrived and there is hardly any sense that this film is actually going somewhere.

Another problem I had was that for a kid’s film, there are some pretty non kiddie moments.

Like the scene where Vijay Raaz and Saurabh Shukla (the two goons) indulge in a long round of swearing at each other (all beeped out, of course). Or the one where Tuk Tuk puckers up before Hari, saying kissing is no big deal.

As I left the theatre, the overwhelming feeling was that of embarrassment - not for the fact that Bollywood can’t stop aping the west, but because we cant even do that with some panache!