Rating: * *

It took a Ruskin Bond short story, two title changes and make -up artist Greg Cammon of the Curious Case of Benjamin Button fame along with Priyanka Chopra and her many onscreen husbands to make Saat Khoon Maaf come true. But the question is, whether all this was really worth the cause. I would say, not quite.

Priyanka Chopra essays the role of Suzanna Marie Johannes , a rich orphan who in her quest for love and permanence marries one wrong man after another and has to kill them all to get rid of them. Her partners in crime are her domestic helps. We are told the story of Suzzanna’s life by Arun, a young but brave and outspoken orphan Suzanna adopts when he is being beaten up by his dumb master.

The humour and fabric of Saat Khoon Maaf is so dark that we can hardly even see Priyanka Chopra’s facial features, and we know she has worked rather hard on them. Honestly speaking we only enjoy the film for the first half hour till we are with Suzanna and her first husband and are getting to know the background for this filthy rich Miss Sahib with quite an appetite for men and a heart overflowing with love.

The movie is unbearably long and in about an hour we are hoping and wishing that she kills the husbands quickly so that we can go home. The viewer would almost feel a sense of desperation at the thought that each of her forthcoming tales will have a build up as long as the previous ones. It is like after a point, we don’t care why she is marrying who she is. There is also a certain amount of repulsion at Suzzanna’s gluttony when it comes to the opposite sex. Sometimes you want to mock her for being and at others pity her for her naiveté and desperation for love. It is like she defies all logic. For her once bitten is not twice shy but craving to be bitten again and again. But Priyanka’s performance in the film is so fantastic that at no time you hate her even though you think she deserves her misery or enjoys it.

This is an out and out Priyanka Chopra film where she completely overshadows all the other characters. If a John Abraham was unhappy about not being given special privileges during promotional activities, I think it was much justified. To top it, the only character we really remember as Suzanna’s husband is Annu Kapoor, who by the way wasn’t the first choice and only stepped into fill up for Southern superstar Mohanlal who decided to walk away from the film for reasons unknown.