Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari — Movie Review by Sucharita

Far be it from me to turn my nose up at mainstream, slapstick Bollywood entertainers. As god is my witness, I recently said even Param Sundari was not the worst way to spend an afternoon.

But this, watching this film, I could feel my life bleeding away as I sat in that darkened room, watching and praying for deliverance.

A little context, real snappy — Sunny’s ex is Ananya, Tulsi’s ex is Vikram. Ananya and Vikram are set to now marry each other. Sunny and Tulsi pretend to be a couple themselves and show up at the destination wedding to try and disrupt it, hoping to win back their love.

SSKTK jaisi filmon ko I slot in the “Formless Film Field” category, a title I invented while trying to talk about Siddharth Anand’s bewilderingly inept film ‘Fighter’. Despite the best resources, craftspeople, huge sums of money, there are some inexplicable movies that make so little sense, one cannot fathom a discernible form, a shape, even an outline of what one is watching, if what you were watching were a living, breathing thing, in a way good stories can be.

This film reads like the exact opposite of a living, breathing thing; it’s more AI than human. For shitz and giggles, I typed in the following prompt in ChatGPT, the free version that too, which lacks advanced analytical skills — “Write a movie script synopsis in 500 words about a young man (A) and woman (B). Both their exes are now marrying each other, so A and B get together to disrupt the wedding, posing as a couple. Write this synopsis in a Bollywood style, slapstick humor, and entertainment. Mention plot points.”, and the result was…..well, tell you what, try it yourself. I will paste this exact prompt in the description under this video, and see what artificial intelligence throws back at you.

As I read the Chat GPT results (it had titled the film “Shaadi toh rukni hi thi”), I was even willing to give it the benefit of the doubt that perhaps it has devised this eerily accurate summation from the plot points of this film that are now being discussed on the internet. Even so, tropes like a girl takes her glasses off and becomes hot overnight or the Delhi waala best friend who periodically hits on a pretty young friend, or Karan Johar showing up as a guest for a rich person’s sangeet, are commonplace, dare I say archaic, and not enough time has gone by since they might be considered okay come all the way around and become novel again. Some might say this film is made in the tone of classic Bollywood cinema and hence is an homage to these tropes- but just mentioning Katrina, Govinda, Shahrukh, Salman, Bahubali, Madhuri, Main Prem Ki Deewani Hoon, Mr India doesn’t make a good tribute.

SSKTK has little to no narrative grip. Performances from lead actors Janhavi Kapoor and Varun Dhawan fail to grasp your fancy. The most I cared about was Rohit Saraf because that beard looks great, and it’s nice to see him do grown-up roles, and Sanya Malhotra because the sun shining down on her golden curls looks magical. And while it’s nice to know good-looking rich actors are dancing for our personal entertainment, aside from the hair appreciation in my previous sentence, it’s damn near impossible to care at all about any character in this film. Especially the women — mother, wife, girlfriend, who do not possess an iota of agency. At least the men get to come up with dumb schemes.

Special mention to Maniesh Paul as Kuku the wedding planner, who, like Raghav Juyal in Ba***ds Of Bollywood, is just mouthing his own one-liners, having fun, acting in his own little parallel film. At one point, he declares, “Ameeron ki shaadi hai, koi function ki kami nahi hogi”, as a reason for the film to randomly insert a Holi song. Have you heard about people organising fake weddings without a bride and groom these days, so fun-starved folks can turn up dressed in ethnic clothing and pay to enjoy the wedding vibes? Sunny Sanskaari Ki Tulsi Kumari is the cinematic version of that phenomenon.

The most popular song in the film, “Bijuria,” is a remake, which feels like a self-fulfilling prophecy for this entire endeavour, jismein Holi wala gana bhi is reheated nachos of every Holi song that’s come before it. At least Anu Malik singing “Do Me A Favor, Let’s Play Holi” had the self-respect to sound vaguely sinister!

As I lost minutes of my life, watching one slow-motion hugging shot after another, I wondered if perhaps it was unfortunate that I watched this film less than 24 hours after seeing Kantara: Chapter 1 on the big screen. Not that Kantara is the perfect movie, look up my review, I had various issues with it. But at least that film gave me something to talk about, get into, and explore meaning within. I had also seen Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet the same day, and not to compare Zhao with Khaitan, but even she made Eternals at one point, hence the pendulum COULD swing the other way, in Khaitaan’s favour. Alas, all hopes were dashed about 5 minutes in. If you’re feeling confident, though, the film IS in movie theatres!