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Subhash K Jha (DNA; May 4, 2015)

It was touted to be Bipasha Basu’s first international project, but don’t expect to see Roland Joffe’s Singularity — now titled The Lovers — in a theatre anytime soon. The celebrated British director’s film, after several delays, recasting and reshooting, has gone straight-to-DVD.

This treatment is usually reserved for films Hollywood loses faith in. What’s worse, critics who have watched the film have been everything from vaguely giggly to downright nasty. Time Out wrote, “Forget that The Lovers doesn’t have the courtesy to be fun; no cosmic romance should be so deeply afraid to shoot for the stars. As one of the film’s many forgettable characters so eloquently puts it, “This stinks worse than an oyster’s fart.”

Adding insult to injury, the Los Angeles Times reviewer said, “What is surprising is the fact that this nonsense, shot in 2012 under the title Singularity, was written and directed by Roland Joffe, who, once upon a time, was responsible for the grittily realistic best-picture Oscar nominee known as The Killing Fields. And lest we forget... a film called City Of Joy starring Om Puri, Shabana Azmi and Patrick Swayze.”

How the mighty have fallen!