WEDDING SEASON
Predictable rom-com provides engaging moments
THE Hollywood romantic comedy recently premiered on streaming site Netflix.
Pallavi Sharda plays a successful career woman who pretends to date a man (Suraj Sharma) her parents have found for an arranged marriage, to keep them off her back. He is under similar pressure, so agrees to attend weddings with her, but things get complicated when their respective parents and nosey community members think the relationship is real. It isn’t long before chemistry starts to get generated by the two seemingly mismatched individuals as they get to know one another better and learn something about themselves.
The movie, which seems to have been inspired by reality series Indian Matchmaking, is kind of a tick box exercise. It visits all the troupes found in romantic comedies and films with south Asian protagonists. This includes montages, the big speech, getting a job in another country, nosey aunties, caricature-like Asian parents obsessed with getting their children married off and colourful Indian weddings.
On one side, the film becomes wholly predictable and has plenty of cliché scenarios, including protagonists who slowly fall in love as they get to know one another better.
At the centre of all this is lead stars Suraj Sharma and Pallavi Sharda. Their chemistry largely keeps audiences engaged, but it is missing the spark that could have really ignited this film, which kind of goes through the motions.
There are some interesting supporting characters, like the white fiancé of the protagonist’s sister who tries too hard to be Indian, but they are not really explored enough.
There was a missed opportunity to include a great soundtrack. The surprisingly poor music is a let down. That doesn’t stop this from being an entertaining enough film with engaging characters and relatable situations.