Param Sundari

Param Sundari directed by Tushar Jalota and led by Sidharth Malhotra and Janhvi Kapoor has been much in the news for the controversy around the portrayal of some of its characters, the stereotypes and the implications of it. However, the film focus on the romance and the comedy aspects with a soundtrack that is fresh for the first time in a long time. The love story is simple and picks up from some of the Bollywood’s classic revamped with time. The film begins with Param played by Siddharth Malhotra narrating about how his life is dictated by data and follows a fixed routine as a business man. The routine being he invests his father’s money in new star ups which don’t work. However, just when his father is about to give up on him, Param comes across an app idea which will help people find their soulmates. To convince his father, Param decides to prove the app is worth investing by setting out to find his own soulmate.

A pamphlet from the Kerala Tourism department will mention

• Elephants
• Kalaripayattu
• Boat races
• Coconut trees
• Lungis
• Banana leaf meals
• Mohini Attam

Why director Tushar Jalota needed co-writers Gaurav Mishra and Aarsh Vora to tell the story of billionaire baap ka beta Param Sachdev (Sidharth Malhotra) and Sundari (Janhvi Kapoor) is curious for it doesn’t go beyond the tourism pamphlets of the scenic state. Ah, yes, what the pamphlets miss and Jalota gets is that God’s own country is unwelcoming of guests, calls their shorts chaddis and insists on a lungi. It’s called fun, in Jalota language. In a shrinking world where barriers between the North and the South have come down, alongside tech talk like apps, AI and algorithms, Jalota flies the Punjabi munda to Kerala who gapes at its culture and its people like he’s in a different galaxy. Param has used a new app to find his soulmate and there she is doing the Mohini Attam in her home stay. Soon, Sundari must give him the mandatory dressing down on how Kerala is different from Tamil Nadu like he’s been living in a North Indian cave.

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.