Fruit and Nut, the directorial debut of actor Kunal Vijaykar, is about a bumbling, accident-prone bachelor named Jolly Maker, played by Cyrus Brocha, who becomes embroiled in a nefarious plot to blow up Mumbai, orchestrated by a loony Maharaja named Harry Holkar, played by Boman Irani.

Vijaykar is aiming for no-holds-barred madcap hilarity but as I watched Fruit and Nut, all I could think was: how did so many talented and ferociously funny men come up with comedy as limp as this.

Fruit and Nut doesn’t maintain a single tone. Vijaykar, who also wrote the story, throws in laughs of every variety, from satire to slapstick, into every scene of the film.

The humour ranges from Jolly tying his own shoelaces and landing face down on the floor to car doors opening into crotches to Monica, a sexy architect played by Diya Mirza, transforming into a leather-clad RAW agent.

Some of this is funny but most of it is not. And Vijaykar isn’t afraid of repeating himself. He must squeeze a laugh out of every frame so Jolly doesn’t sit on his bosses’ broken leg just once. He does it again and again and again.

Some of the dialogue crackles—a wicked builder called Khandar, played by Mahesh Manjererkar speaks fluent nonsense.

So sentences like Omar Sharifon ki tarah behave karo and Tum takleef kyun utha rahe ho, why are you lifting trouble regularly roll off his tongue.

I also enjoyed the aging hitmen Salim-Suleman who can’t pull off a contract killing because one has cataract and the other has Parkinsons’ disease. When they accidentally kill each other, Holakar says: Salim Suleman mar gaye toh background music kaun dega?

Unfortunately these moments of inspired lunacy are too few and far between. An unadulterated comedy, which also works as social critique, is a tricky tight ropewalk. It requires invention, imagination and a certain buoyancy, to keep the film afloat.

The best example of course is Kundan Shah’s black comedy classic Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron, which also took a swipe at greedy builders. But Fruit and Nut runs out of steam pretty early on. It is laboured.

Vijaykar and his actors are straining too hard to make you laugh at jokes that are simply too flimsy for film. It’s exhausting more than entertaining. See it if you must.