Move over Salman Khan, it’s time to make way for Main Tera Hero star Varun Dhawan: a star pupil who seems to have graduated from your school of acting (or non-acting).

The 26-year-old does everything in his power to win over hearts and he succeeds. Just like bhai (as Khan is fondly called in Bollywood), Dhawan displays incredible pecs-bouncing ability and makes juggling between two hot women seem like a good idea. But in Main Tera Hero, he had me at Katrina Kaif and his swipe at her faulty Hindi. The jokes roll easy in the first half as we get to know Ooty’s answer to Dennis, the menace: Seenu (Dhawan).

He’s not the brightest bulb in his class but what he lacks in intellect, the overgrown prankster overcompensates with wit and charm. The first half is designed to display Dhawan Jr as the ultimate Bollywood hero material. The son of director David Dhawan proves that he can dance, sing, woo women, bash up baddies and have inane conversations with God — and make it all seem normal.

This is a comedy that pays ode to men who remain boys. He joins the fictional TIFTS college in Bengaluru and it’s no TUFTS University — the academic haven near Boston. Here, the students look as if they learnt to dance shirtless before they learnt how to spell. Seenu’s conversation with his indulgent mother while at college which goes something like: “Ma, even if I don’t bring a degree home, I will make sure that I bring a wife home,” underlines the theme of this film.

On his first day of college, his eyes fall upon Sunaina (incredibly slender Ileana D’Cruz). And instead of finding his classroom, he digs up her history. She’s engaged to a beefy, evil cop Angad who is immune to anger management lessons. What happens in the next one hour is a tug of wills among the impish Seenu, the helpless waif, Sunaina, and her bullish boyfriend Angad.

While the first half is amusing, the second half gets sluggish in the last 20 minutes. At some point, the love triangle becomes a quadrangle with a voluptuous Nargis Fakhri entering the frame. Actor Anupam Kher, who plays Fakhri’s dad, is in top form as a dim-witted gangster, while the women take the term ‘eye candies’ to a fabulous level. Their bronzed, sculpted bodies in bikinis are welcome distractions when you find yourself looking for a story in this film.

But full marks to Dhawan for carrying a comedy with a questionable plot till the finish line. He lays on the charm thick and nice. And if that didn’t seem to work, he just took off his shirt.

Watch this if you like films that don’t challenge you to think.