Long ago, a top Bollywood producer advised a fledgling young filmmaker to take a plane to London, watch a Hollywood movie and make a copy of it in Hindi peppering it with local mirch and masala! Those were the days when films were not easily available on disks, and far less on pirated ones. However, with pirated copies of the latest Hollywood releases out in the local market merely days after they open in the West, Indian producers need not fly to the UK or USA to get their desi versions scripted.

The latest Aamir Khan starrer, Ghajini, is a classic case of such repackaging. Though it has reportedly grossed Rs two billion (41 million dollars) in less than two weeks after its opening, overtaking the 1995 Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, Ghajini is a rip-off from Christopher Nolan`s Memento (2000).

Well, most people in the Subcontinent would not have seen Memento, and to them Ghajini could be something brand new. And with Khan`s punk hairstyle (I am told the holy priests of Puri`s Jagannath Temple have begun to sport this cut) and Asin debuting in Bollywood, the movie has these pluses to push it ahead.

Were the audiences disappointed? Or were they satisfied? We would never know, but writer-director A. R. Murugadoss` Ghajini (a remake from Tamil version with the one in Hindi, being a copy of a copy) is a wild shot in exaggerated exuberance. A romantic thriller, a psychological mish-mash and a song-and-dance extravaganza, all rolled into a 184-minute bundle, the film would leave even a veteran Bollywood fan foxed.

Nolan`s central character suffering from a short-term memory loss is Murugadoss` Sanjay (Khan), a biceps exhibitionist and an unbelievably powerful business magnate with a private jet and black-suited men to escort him around as he goes about clinching money-spinning deals and doling charity. When soft spoken Sanjay meets a loud-mouth upcoming model, Kalpana (Asin), bragging about her conquest of him, not realising that he is the man, a strange chemistry begins to work. Sanjay woos her without revealing who he is not just with flowers and fragrances, but also a fabulous flat, a gift passed off as a prize won in a lottery conducted by the mobile phone company he owns.

Tragically, Kalpana, whose passion extends beyond paint and polish, costumes and catwalk, to the betterment of society angers Ghajini (Pradeep Rawat), who is into extortion and exploitation of orphan girls. He and his henchmen butcher Kalpana and batter Sanjay into a man with just a 15-minute memory. Thus challenged, he goes about with a Polaroid camera, a little notebook, huge markings on the walls of his house and ugly tattoos on his body - each reminding him that he must avenge his sweetheart`s murder.

While a hugely transformed Sanjay goes about roaring for the kill in parts that play like a horror movie, a medical student (Jiah Khan) and a cop (Riyaz Khan) try out two different forms of investigations into the man`s challenged life. At the end, in what appears like a rerun of the earlier mayhem, Ghajini tries to bludgeon the student and Sanjay. But then Bollywood baddies cannot have the last laugh and the course of a film from Mumbai`s magic studios has to be predictable to the last frame.

What is not quite predictable though, is Aamir Khan`s performance that swings from the animated to the alluring. As the man crippled by a frightening memory loss, he is angry and excellent, but as the lover he is not as convincing, a poor script being, in all probability, the cause. I can never understand how a fashion model fails to recognise a well known businessman, and till the end she is in the dark about this. And strangely, Sanjay becomes a one-man army when he begins to pursue Ghajini. Where is Sanjay`s empire? Where are the men who guarded him? Where are those who were part of his very existence? In the end, the story boils down to a pathetic picture of Jiah Khan helping a savage Sanjay take on evil.

Often the violence is sickening and the romantic hyphens that link one set of sadistic images to another in the film`s flash-back/flash-forward style provide little relief. Ghajini is too ghoulish for spoonfuls of sugar to even remotely sweeten it. If it is this kind of rancid romp that audiences savour my hats off to their taste - that is if the stated theatrical admission figures are true. Given the climate of corporate deceit that prevails in India, I am not so sure.