-By Frank Lovece

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An Indian film opening on a relatively expansive 90 North American screens, according to distributor UTV (which had bequeathed it a rare U.S. premiere event at New York's Museum of Modern Art), this drama with music by A.R. Rahman, composer of the Slumdog Millionaire score, scores points for ambition and serious intent. Yet this tale of a desi—a first-generation Indian-American—in Delhi reconnecting with his roots meanders through too many subplots and ideas, giving short shrift to each without adequately developing a unifying theme. It may, however, find favor among an American "travelogue" audiences, who might not cotton to the usual big, brash Bollywood musical experience (and more fools they—Indian musicals are the most amazing in the world right now), but who might otherwise like to spend a couple of hours living vicariously, and authentically, in India.

Major Indian star Abhishek Bachchan—who proved equally hilarious and touching in both the musical romance Jhoom Barabar Jhoom (2007) and the gay-pretender comedy Dostana (2008)—plays Roshan, a thirty-something Indian-American in New York City. When his grandmother (Waheeda Rahman) learns she has a terminal disease, Roshan accompanies her back to the old family home in Delhi, where the stoically cheerful woman wants to die. Home turns out to be in the ancient, walled part of Delhi—a neighborhood known by its postal code as Delhi-6.

Roshan, who's half-Muslim, half-Hindu and all American, is at first thoroughly enchanted by the colorful natives, who treat his dadi like a revered extended family member—none more so than his father's brother, Ali (Rishi Kapoor), a jolly sort who'd fallen in love with her first before letting her get away. Understandably, Uncle Ali takes Roshan under his wing when he sees meet-cute sparks between the young man and a pretty neighbor girl, Bittu (Sonam Kapoor, wooden in her second movie after Sony Pictures' disappointing, 2007 U.S.-India co-production Saawariya). More importantly, he bails Roshan out when his American notions of police brutality collide with a bullying inspector (Vijay Raaz), who goes so far as to try to force himself on a low-caste street sweeper (Divya Dutta).

The well-meaning American has also arrived in time for a media sensation called the "Black Monkey"—a newly imagined mythic creature like an urban Bigfoot who, in a plot turn recalling Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," gets new and different attributes with each supposed sighting. The media has fun with it at first, with an “Unsolved Mysteries”-type show covering every burglary and goat disappearance, and Black Monkey merchandise hitting the stores, but soon the neighborhood's Muslim community notices it's being targeted more than the Hindus and, well, the monsters are due on Maple Street even when Maple Street's in Delhi. This stripping away of the thin veneer of tolerance between two religious groups—daringly portrayed as both devout and ridiculously backward and superstitious—resonates far more effectively than the rote romance.

The musical numbers play under montages or silent vignettes, except for one utterly lovely fantasy sequence set in Times Square, where East meets West in green-screen splendor. Bachchan's father, longtime Indian superstar Amitabh Bachchan, has a cameo as Roshan's own dead dad.