Dev D is India's answer to sexual-lib: for instance, when Paro rides her bicycle to the fields she makes it a point to carry the mattress along; Chandramukhi attends college during the day and moonlights as a multilingual sex-worker (isn't that the politically correct term these days?); and Devdas, well, he is the same, more or less: a self-centered alcoholic, who romances Paro by asking her to email him her nude photo. For some reason, he fails to gain my sympathy even in this particular adaptation of Sarat Chandra's time classic of a hopeless romantic.

To bring the tale up-to-date, the plot makes liberal use of contemporary controversies: the MMS scandal of a schoolgirl filmed in the act of fellatio and the BMW case, when an industrialist's son drove his BMW over seven unsuspecting roadside sleepers, crushing them to death- both are incorporated into Dev D.

The direction is slick, the songs funny, and the drug-induced sequences, well, they are a direct rip-off from Danny Boyle's Trainspotter. And yes, it could do with a bit more editing.

However, this isn't a film you would want to take your family to, as I learnt to my great embarrassment: both my mother and woman-friend had little choice but to leave the theater post-interval. Their comment: "how sick can it get?"

Just as sick as it really is, I suppose.