Starring Akshay Kumar, Deepika Padukone, Roger Yuan, and Gordon Liu. Directed by Nikhil Advani. In Hindi, Mandarin, and Cantonese with English subtitles. Rated PG.

Chandni Chowk to China, billed as the first-ever masala-chop-socky Indo-Chinese comedy backed by Hollywood major Warner Bros., is a cringe-inducing film so incredibly bad that it makes star Akshay Kumar’s last outing—Singh Is Kinng, another lame comedy—look like a masterpiece.

Kumar brings his now tiresome dumb-guy schtick to his character of Sidhu (meaning “simpleton”), a cook on Delhi’s renowned Chandni Chowk street. Sidhu dreams of riches and a way out of his lowly existence, but most of his harebrained schemes get him into more trouble with his mentor-father Dada (Mithun Chakraborty), who gives him a hard kick in the ass, literally, to bring him down to reality.

Everything changes when Sidhu finds a potato shaped like Ganesh. While trying to sucker people out of money with his potato deity, Sidhu is spotted by two Chinese men, who claim that he is the reincarnation of the ancient Chinese warrior Liu Sheng.

From here, the film becomes a series of loosely connected stories involving twins born to Indo-Chinese parents, and a Chinese gangster (Gordon Liu) terrorizing a small village, whom Sidhu must defeat.

Director Nikhil Advani seems lost in trying to execute this old formula, which rips off story elements from Bollywood’s twins-sagas (Seeta and Geeta) and Hong Kong flicks like Kung Fu Hustle.

While these broad comedies can be forgiven for their lack of any credibility, this film also doesn’t deliver on the song and dance numbers. Its martial-arts action sequences are substandard, given that Chandni Chowk boasts Liu and others who worked on productions like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.

Sometimes you wonder how a film like CC2C can go so wrong, considering the talent and large budget at the producer’s disposal. Too much money, in this case, may have been a creative hindrance, as everyone seems to be too busy stroking their egos and waiting to count the cash from suckers lured by the marquee names and the hype.