In spite of the critical acclaim none of Hansal Mehta’s films have made money. The filmmaker hopes to change that with his latest.

Simran is Mehta’s do-or-die effort to get a grip over the boxoffice. This explains why he’s willing to take any kind of argument conduct and attitude that his leading lady Kangana Ranaut shovels out.He even allowed her war of creative jurisdiction with writer Apurva Asrani to escalate because he doesn’t want anything to go wrong in his seemingly foolproof plan.

A source close to Mehta’s cinema says, “For the first time in his career Hansal Mehta has allowed an actor to call the shots. It’s a submission born out of a desperate desire for a boxoffice hit. Hansal hopes Simran would be another Queen for Ranaut.Sadly a success like Queen cannot be designed. You can’t take the same actress and hope to encore history.”

The trailer sees the feisty actress playing a Gujarati NRI in the US who works as a housekeeper and amuses her wardrobe with kleptomania.

This is the second film in a month that shows stealing from departmental stores and malls to be extremely liberating for the protagonist. In Alankrita Shrivsatva’s Lipstick Under The Burqa the young protagonist Plobita Borthakursauntered out of swanky high-end clothes stores with unpaid luxuries under her burqa.

In Simran kleptomania seems the least of Kangana’s problems. That she is unable to hold on to relationships seems a bigger issue here.She tells her fiancé that her real character flaw is gambling and kleptomania. The fiance’s reaction of outrage and disgust amuses Kangana. We are supposed empathize with her unorthodox take on life. But it doesn’t really happen that way. At least , not in the first big Bollywood project that’s come Hansal’s way.

Kangana seems to be milking the character’s unconventionality for all its worth. Whether this ploy of letting it all hang out works or not , we shall know on 15 September.

God knows, Kangana and Hansal Mehta need a hit. But playing the rebellious Gujju-American may not be everybody’s idea of a wacky evening in blunderland.

The trailer seems designed to seduce us into attentiveness. It gets our attention, though not as much of it as expected.