Doctors in Hindi films have forever been a type. Their consistent unscientific advice on a range of conditions continues with this film. So, when a character in this film is diagnosed with Alzheimer's, the doctor points out that it's "hairy-ditry" and suggests, "Iska koi ilaaj nahin hain. But patient ko har haal mein khush rakhna." A strand of hair for every time a doctor has uttered these words in a film, and we'd be Anil Kapoor.

We can't complain and we can't blame it on anything or anyone else. It's our fault, really. It's our own sins we are paying for. We the people of India are guilty - of loving him so much, of hailing and feting him and spending so much money on him, at the expense of many others, that karma the b***h has come back to bite us in the ass in the form of his son.

Abhishek Bachchan is not a bad actor. After all, his career includes films like Yuva, Guru, Raavan and the likes. Of late, no one's got any clue what has happened to him. Call it fate or bad choices or a secret which probably Rohnda Byrne's The Secret will be able to reveal, he is just not able to gift his fans a film that they would lap up. All Is Well just deepens that mystery further. But more on that later.

So, All Is Well is a film that literally takes you back. Inder (Abhishek) grows up seeing his parents Bhajanlal Bhalla (Rishi) and Pammi (Supriya) clash through a stormy marriage. Breaking away, Inder abandons his parents in Kasol to make a musical career in Thailand where he dates Nimmi (Asin) but hates the thought of shaadi. Nimmi leaves for an arranged marriage in India.

He is working very hard to that end, we are told. In Pattaya. Given that Bangkok is the new Lonavla, it doesn't seem absurd that a man hopes to sing Hindi songs at crossings and malls there and become a star. However, there is a minor problem. You can't be sure if this aspiring rockstar knows how to play the guitar. He just carries it around the way Paris Hilton carried her chihuahua with her.

Filmmaker Umesh Shukla is best known for his terrific entertainer 'OMG - Oh My God!'. But if you think ( like I did) that 'All Is Well' will be something similar then you better be ready for an eyewash. The director has tried his best but it is the script which lets it loose.

Abhishek Bachchan plays the guitar-wielding cool dude musician Inder Bhalla, who has a passionate love-hate relationship with his parents, his once-on-now-off girlfriend Rimi (Asin) and generally with life. He's left his always warring parents (Rishi Kapoor and Supriya Pathak) to be in a foreign country.

The film takes off with Inder (Abhishek Bachchan) performing (singing) in Bangkok where as in his flashback we see his troubled childhood. As a child, Inder has grown up with a lot of bitterness thanks to his parents having constant fights. Bhalla (Rishi Kapoor) is Inder's father who runs a bakery in Kasol. After Inder graduates, his dad expects him to join his bakery business but Inder is interested in music.

There is some strange correlation between director Umesh Shukla and the letters P and K. After his successful satire OMG: Oh My God pointedly mocked godmen and blind faith, a film called PK came along that did the same thing less scathingly. Now, a few months after Piku regaled us while giving us a treatise on the importance and inevitability of caring for the elderly, here comes Shukla's newest, which also features a disgruntled kid and a father with bladder issues.

Whoever named this film must have a great sense of black humour, because the only thing 'well' about the film is its title. As for the rest, it goes beyond all notions of wellness. In other words, terrible. Rishi Kapoor plays a Mr Bhalla, who runs a bakery in a hill station called Kasol. He is never seen to be baking anything.

All is far from well with All Is Well, but this road trip dramedy has just about enough impetus not to be thrown completely off its chosen track by its occasional inertia. Director Umesh Shukla switches frequently from breezy slapstick comedy to intense family drama and does so relatively smoothly until about the last quarter of the two-hour film.

For any movie reviewer worth his salt, director Umesh Shukla's All Is Well is the last word in occupational hazard: You sit through a two-hour-plus film waiting for one spark of creativity, or even half-a-fun moment. By the time you're walking out of the hall, you don't know whom to curse more: the filmmakers or your editor who put you through this. Yes, nothing is well with All Is Well!