Starring Akshay Kumar, Kareena Kapoor, Denise Richards, and Sylvester Stallone. Directed by Sabbir Khan. Rated PG. In Hindi and English, with English subtitles.

The much-hyped Kambakkht Ishq—which features Hollywood has-beens Sylvester Stallone, Denise Richards, and Brandon Routh—was supposed to be about Bollywood meeting Hollywood. Instead, it has the dubious honour of being one of the worst Bollywood films of 2009, a year that will likely be remembered most for the two-month strike that nearly crippled the struggling film industry.

One-note action star Akshay Kumar, who has already delivered two stinkers this year (including the masala-chopsocky comedy Chandni Chowk to China), plays Hollywood stuntman Viraj Shergill, who doubles for the likes of Stallone and Routh and romances American stars like Richards. But that’s another story.

The main story our loudmouthed, macho, male chauvinist pig of a hero is stuck in is the one where he is constantly butting heads with his female, man-hating rival, Simrita Rai (Kareena Kapoor).

The two leads are brought together by a ridiculous plot line in which they try to stop the marriage of their friends Lucky (Aftab Shivdasani) and Kamini (Amrita Arora). From this point on, the film disintegrates into a demeaning battle of the sexes, with much silliness and the continuous uttering of the word bitch.

Debut director Sabbir Khan and producer Sajid Nadiadwala spent much time and money filming a number of big-set action sequences on Hollywood studio backlots with Kumar, and even one with Stallone. But none of them, including the usually reliable song-and-dance numbers, really jell in a plot that seems to have been made up right on-set.

While Kapoor and the rest of the cast, including the Hollywood players, are adequate, Kumar is again way over the top. The Bollywood superstar has made these broad action-comedies with silly, mind-numbing story lines a key to his box office success, but with each film, his persona becomes more and more irritating.