The first few minutes of Meeruthiya Gangsters are an omen. First, the camera bounces around to let us know just how bumpy a ride it is if you drive a motorcycle in Meerut. Then, when the bike rider has assumed a stationary position, the camera goes round and round in circles.

Zeishan Qadri of Gangs of Wasseypur fame makes his directorial debut with Meeruthiya Gangsters that hit theatres on Friday. Anurag Kashyap has been going gaga over the film and even claimed that he could see his own reflection in Qadri. But has the writer-actor-turned-director delivered to the high standards set by his mentor?

As the title suggests, the film is about a group of gangsters from Meerut. College students, Nikhil (Jaideep Ahlawat), Amit (Aakash Dahiya), Gagan (Vansh Bhardwaj), Sunny (Shadab Kamal), Rahul (Chandrachoor Rai) and Sanjeev Foreigner (because he has mehendi-blonde hair) find novel ways to make a fast buck.

Nikhil (Jaideep Ahlawat), Amit (Aakash Dahiya), Gagan (Vansh Bhardwaj), Sunny (Shadab Kamal), Rahul (Chandrachoor Rai) and Sanjeev Foreigner (because of his hair color) are college buddies who are Meerut-based. After passing out of college, the lads in search for jobs and it seems either to start their own business or get a job, they need to raise money first. In their search to make fast money, they end-up kidnapping a businessman.

Co-presented by Anurag Kashyap, Meeruthiya Gangsters is a pretentious, frivolous tale of a group of good-for-nothing friends from Meerut, who by happen to become gangsters. It is a staged drama which is often seen in films from Mr Kashyap's stable. The narration starts off intriguingly with the title song as the background score and a profile of a person, in a vehicle leading us into the Meerut college campus. The scene then cuts into the college canteen and into the lives of the six friends.

The only respite in Meeruthiya Gangsters is the sly humour writer-director Zeishan Quadri laces his lines with. Barring that, there is hardly a show of his inspired writing. A bunch of dreamy-eyed local goons creating havoc - is a story we've often explored on celluloid and has now ceased to be as inventive or impressive as before. Drawing from the baleful sphere, Quadri dishes out an insipid formulaic story that follows the routine of staple gangster sagas in Bollywood.

A bunch of jobless fellows shooting the breeze in a college canteen can be a gas. Especially if those guys speak in local accents ( the town is Meerut, the action spilling over into neighbouring Noida), and are easy with guns and gals and 'gaalis'. But 'Meeruthiya Gangsters' is so far from being the zippy crime caper it presumably set out to be that it leaves you stranded, wondering just what is going on.