The world's richest man's daughter gets kidnapped. So what does he do? Among other things, he says: "Maine apne assistant ko bola hai ki mere dushmano ki list bana le". This is only one of the many spectacularly dim-witted moments in Sanjay Ghadvi's thriller Kidnap.

My other favourite is a scene in which Sonia, played by Minissha Lamba, tells her kidnaper Kabir, played by Imran Khan, that she really needs a bath. They don't have enough water so he takes her to the beach where she proceeds to do a sensuous dance in a transparent white tunic and sings, and I'm not kidding here, a song that goes: Mausam yeh awesome bada.

Of course, despite being in captivity, Sonia has a ready wardrobe of skimpy clothes just right for these special occasions.

Shibani Bhatija's script, about a young man who seeks revenge on a rich businessman by kidnapping his daughter, probably sounded good on paper. On screen, it is undiluted comedy. Ghadvi starts smartly setting up the back-story in the title sequence itself but then we cut straight to an item song which, I assume, was supposed to establish how carefree and cool Sonia is.

More than anything, she's miscast. Minissha is supposed to be 17 years old year and if that isn't enough of a howler, her mother is played by Vidya Malvade, who looks more like her older sister. What's worse is that Malvade spends most of the screen time trying to out-do Minissha with carefully arranged glimpses of cleavage. She seems barely traumatised by her daughter's kidnapping though we are told that she is coping by visiting the Siddhi Vinayak Temple.

For reasons that are never quite clear, the parents divorced when Sonia was a child. But they are forced to re-unite when their daughter is kidnapped and instead of a ransom, the kidnapper only demands that the father,
Vikrant Raina, played by a paunchy Sanjay Dutt, perform a series of tasks. Raina is an Indian Bill Gates. He is the world's richest man with a net worth of 51.7 billion dollars but the press or police never get a whiff of his actions even when he is stealing a bag of money or helping a prisoner escape by, believe it or not, disguising himself as a fireman. What can actors do with material like this?

Dutt looks bored. Imran scowls and tries to bring conviction to his role but the silliness of this enterprise is insurmountable.

See Kidnap only if, after Jaane Tu ya Jaane Na, you need to get another Imran fix. Or if you want a good laugh!