Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari Review

Since the trailer and title of the movie, Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari, have already given away certain details to the audience, I don’t think it would be wrong to reveal some details in a Review. There is a moment of realization in the movie where multiple characters are running into each other to express their feelings, and when our hero Sunny sees his ex Ananya, she understands that Sunny’s feelings are somewhere else, and she just says the name. If Bollywood were trying to reinvent itself by depending on the same old posh wedding drama, I would say the design of that moment where a lot of things are spoken without saying much is what they should follow. Unfortunately for Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari and many more films from mainstream Hindi cinema, that level of subtlety is not acceptable. Shashank Khaitan’s film is generic and hammy, and it is almost like they made it to be a guilty pleasure movie for those who consider Mismatched a classic.

Sunny Sanskari, our hero, was in a relationship with Ananya. Similarly, Tulsi Kumari was in a relationship with Vikram Singh. Both these relationships ended when Ananya and Vikram’s parents told them that their respective partners weren’t good for them. A determined Sunny and Tulsi team up and decide to attend Ananya and Vikram’s wedding in order to get them back. The drama that unfolds during their jodi breaking operation is what we see in Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari.

The first half of this movie is largely built around dialogue humor with rhyming jokes and parodies of old film songs and lines. The really annoying thing about those jokes was that they depended heavily on background music effects. You know the “twooing” effect that comes after each line in the Kapil Sharma show to give the audience the cue to laugh. I would have forgotten the fact that the Story here has zero freshness, and we know what will happen in the beginning itself, if they had tried to show the evolution of the relationship between Sunny and Tulsi as adorable on screen. The writing is adding romantic scenes between the duo, almost like they suddenly remembered about building that relationship while focusing majorly on creating over-the-top dramatic situations and funny scenes. Towards the very end of the movie, I thought the film was about to do something we couldn’t see coming. But to my disappointment, they decided to stick to the cliche.

Co-written by Ishita Moitra along with director Shashank Khaitan, the writing is indeed the fundamental problem of this movie. The premise itself is an unexciting one. The efforts on a writing level are not to improve that concept by approaching it differently or adding layers to it. They are just basically stretching scenes and moments to make it feel like a movie. The way the interval point comes in this film clearly shows how clueless they are in setting up a conflict. There is a setup for women’s empowerment and discussion about unhealthy marriage in the movie, using the character of Vikram’s sister-in-law. Its placement was so evident that you could see Varun’s monologue coming from miles away. It was almost like the makers were asking for brownie points for including all these socially relevant and politically correct elements in this Story. The energy of the Panwadi song was really helping the movie along with its visual scale. The rest of the songs felt like forcefully added loud party mixes with nothing memorable about them.

Varun Dhawan feels like a very limited actor when it comes to playing these loud characters. There isn’t a single point in the movie where his acting manages to internalize the feelings of Sunny. In the penultimate moment in the film, where he is supposed to hide his emotions, the performance was so overdone that people were almost laughing. I understand that he is one of the most energetic actors in the current lot. But in all honesty, the way he is made to run in this movie, in many areas, almost makes it very comedic, as it fundamentally lacks the swagger or grace required for a romantic film. Janhvi Kapoor, on the other hand, is supposed to be this sweet girl (25K monthly pocket money middle-class girl) who is being desired by both men. Other than the ability to carry those flashy outfits, I just couldn’t see any aura in Janhvi’s performance that would explain why the two men were falling for Tulsi. Rohit Saraf and Sanya Malhotra are playing calmer characters, and they were easy on the eyes and ears. It was funny that the script wanted to pair Sunny and Tulsi because Ananya and Vikram didn’t deserve them. But when you look at the kind of things the duo does, you feel sort of happy for Vikram and Ananya. Maniesh Paul and Abhinav Sharma play the typical comic relief characters.

There is a sequence in the film where Sunny, drunk-dials his parents at 3 AM, and the entire conversation in that scene is really funny, and at the same time, it gives us some insight about that character. If this movie had more such instances that had humor and humane emotions, the predictability of the Story wouldn’t have been an issue. But Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari exposes its mediocrity by running after songs and gags. There is a moment in the movie where Sunny dreams about Tulsi, and the backdrop of the dream is Bahubali. If I am not wrong, Janhvi is supposed to be Devasena. But why on earth does Devasena have jasmine flowers on her head?