Starring Rajat Bedi and Kulbhushan Kharbanda. In Punjabi with English subtitles. Rated PG.

The job of a film reviewer may seem glamorous and fun. Sometimes, however, it can be pure torture, especially if you have to sit through almost three hours of an absolutely mind-numbing, cliché-ridden story that changes tracks so many times that you feel like you’ve been watching five different films. When I had to review Lakh Pardesi Hoiye (Despite Being Foreigners), a Punjabi-language film that tells a story of NRIs (nonresident Indians) set in London and Punjab, I wasn’t expecting much—Punjabi-language cinema is several notches below Bollywood in storytelling and execution. But this film really tests the patience of the viewer with its making-it-up-as-you-go plot that only gets more ludicrous as it goes along.

At its core is a story of a successful widowed father, Shamsher Singh Sandhu (Kulbhushan Kharbanda), and his very British son, Harry (Rajat Bedi). Following the typical formula of these types of films, the father holds on to his cultural heritage while the son is a bad apple who has been spoiled by the sinful and evil western culture, thereby creating generational and cultural conflict.

Such cultural conflict can be explored in a meaningful way by examining both sides of the issue, but director Swaran Singh can’t decide what story he wants to tell, so he throws in everything, including the kitchen sink, even messing up the elements that are working somewhat. The performances of the leads, particularly Bedi, who has the charm and swagger required to portray a wealthy foreign-raised NRI, are strong but they are wasted by the suffocating plot.

There is only so much empty moralizing, overt clichés, and patriotic speeches of India being great and the West being evil that one can take. But when they throw in a laughable plot involving London bombings and Muslim gangsters and how innocent Indians are being harassed by British authorities, it leaves viewers flabbergasted.