Param Sundari

Punjabi ‘munda’ meets Malayali ‘penkutti’ in Param Sundari, and everything happens by the numbers. End of story. Wait, there’s 136 minutes of the film, which struggles to find both the rom and the com, from the beginning to the end, finding its feet only towards the last half an hour. By which time Param (Sidharth Malhotra) and Sundari (Janhvi Kapoor) have finished with their meet-cute in a small Kerala town homestay, gone into the long second act which perks up only when such supporting actors Manjot Singh (hero’s BFF) and Renji Panicker (the heroine’s brusque uncle) show up, finally fetching up at their DDLJ moment, where you can see the spark, fleetingly, between the good-looking leads.

Param Sundari is assemble-your-own-Kerala for dummies. Start with backwaters. Add elephants. Better still: elephants being sung the Malayalam lyrics from ‘Jiya Jale’. Toss in a Mohanlal song. Kalarippayattu. Mohiniyattam. Onam. Ayurveda. Unironic use of ‘god’s own country’. Nurses. Mundus. Red flags. Churches. Boat races. Tushar Jalota’s film hangs its Kerala fetish on the flimsiest of premises. Param (Sidharth Malhotra) is an amiable Delhi failson who keeps launching unsuccessful startups bankrolled by his wealthy father (Sanjay Kapoor). He’s intrigued by a new app called Find Your Soulmate, which matches your unique ‘frequency’ to the one person who’s meant for you. It’s the kind of faux-scientific woo-woo that would set anyone’s alarm bells ringing. Not Param, though, who’s thrilled to learn that his own soulmate is apparently in a small town in Kerala. After informing papa, he sets off to beta test.