Starring: Yami Gautam, Vikrant Massey, Suhail Nayyar, Ayesha Raza, Rajiv Gupta
Director: Puneet Khanna
It has been quite a refreshing trend among recent Bollywood releases to see archaic stereotypes around love and marriage being shaken up to throw up characters that feel more authentic and relatable.
Ginny Juneja (Gautam) is a headstrong and smart young career woman with a well-defined perspective on life. Her mother Shobha’s (Raza) successful matchmaking business has served only to convince her against any merits that an arranged marriage could hold for her, making her determined to settle on a life partner of her own choosing or embrace a happy single life until the right man comes along. Her outright rejections of every match her mother’s sharp professional skills manage to shortlist makes for a playful yet tense mother-daughter dynamic.
Enter Sunny Sethi (Massey), who by sheer contrast is seeking out Shobha’s matchmaking skills because he is quite literally obsessed with the idea of getting married – with all its trimmings. And, he has no qualms about romantic love being a missing ingredient in such a match. The driving force behind his obsession with getting hitched is largely a business one – to meet his father’s (Gupta) one condition before being handed the keys to the family’s hardware store, which wannabe chef Sunny wants to tear down to make way for his signature restaurant.
These two characters, clearly poles apart, collide on the streets of Delhi and eventually fall in love over holidays to the hills and several heart to heart conversations. The fact that it is Ginny’s mum pulling the strings behind this courtship soon seems irrelevant as the couple’s compatibility is pretty undeniable.
However, will Ginny’s on again, off again college romance with Nishant (Nayyar) and Sunny’s angry decision to marry a gangster’s daughter let Ginny ultimately wed Sunny?
The title of the film is quite the giveaway. But there is enough in store with the upheavals these ideally suited but diametrically opposed lovers must face to get to that expected conclusion. The suburban Delhi milieu of the Punjabi families and some clever Bollywood in-jokes around classic films like ‘Sholay’ make this a fairly enjoyable ride. The music of the film is packed with hit after hit wedding jingle, with catchy dance routines and cameos by popular musicians an added bonus.
‘Ginny Weds Sunny’ is the perfect ticket if you are on the lookout for some mindless fun and a scenic tour of northern India thrown in. There are moments in the plot that stretch the imagination just that extra mile, but then the whole point is to not take Ginny or Sunny too seriously and just enjoy their big fat Punjabi wedding.
*‘iGlobal’ Review Series