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Release
date:
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February 23, 2018
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Director:
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Luv Ranjan
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Cast:
Language:
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Kartik Aaryan,
Nushrat Bharucha, Sunny Singh, Ishita Raj
Hindi
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Sonu and Titu have
been buddies since nursery and almost brothers. The motherless Sonu even
addresses Titu’s mother as “Mummy”.
Titu is the pretty and
gullible one, an innocent darling who keeps falling for manipulative,
controlling women. Street-smart, worldly-wise Sonu sees these women for the
witches that they are and has been saving Titu from them for years.
Enter: Sweety
Sharma as sweet Titu’s potential biwi.
Sonu is immediately suspicious of her, as he is of any new woman in his Titu’s
life, and as he probably will be of any man too, you realise as the film rolls
on. But Sweety comes up trumps in every test Sonu throws at her until his opposition
to his best friend’s wedding becomes: she is too good to be true, so she must
be faking her goodness.
Is Sonu right in
doubting Sweety? Or will Sonu Ke Titu Ki
Sweety prove that in a world filled with godawful, devious women and their
male victims, there are some decent women after all?
If you have watched
writer-director Luv Ranjan’s earlier works, the answers to these questions are so
obvious that you may as well fast forward to the final scenes. Ranjan’s calling
card so far remains the sleeper hit Pyaar Ka Punchnama (2011), which was about three hapless, innocent young men
embroiled in abusive relationships each with an all-out evil, calculating she-devil. He briefly flirted with sensitivity in Akaash Vani (2013), a film on marital
rape, but returned with a second woman-hate-fest in the form of Pyaar Ka Punchnama (PKP) 2 in 2015, a near carbon
copy of the first with a marginally different cast.
Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety recycles the cast,
clichés and convictions of both the PKP
films.
Kartik Aaryan and
Nushrat Bharucha who play Sonu and Sweety here, have been fixtures in all
Ranjan’s films so far. Bharucha still looks like she might have the potential
to do something different, but Aaryan, who showed some spark in the first PKP, is tiresome and hammy now.
Sunny Singh, who
was in PKP2, delivers an off-the-mark
performance here as a duh-ish Titu, although the director’s intent seems to be
to portray him as naïve and golden-hearted, not dumb.
Sonnalli Seygall
and Ishita Raj played horrid girlfriends in the two PKPs. Seygall has a few seconds long cameo here as one of Sonu’s
female human playthings, while Raj has a longer role as – wait for it, c’moooonnnn, try
guessing – a horrid girlfriend. Raj is the only
breath of fresh air of the lot.
The opening scene
of Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety features Sonu
lecturing a man with a monologue of a length that is designed to remind us of
the extended monologues assigned to Kartik Aaryan’s characters in PKP 1&2. Thankfully this one is much
shorter, but it serves as a teaser to the formulaic story that follows. The
inside joke is also amusingly
self-important considering that while this actor and director have enjoyed some
success, they have yet to enter the mainstream consciousness.
From that opener,
the film cuts to Titu weeping over a girlfriend who has accused him of invading
her privacy because he accessed her Tinder account. Sonu goes into a
detailed description of the scheming harridan that she is. We are only minutes
into the film, and already a cloying repetitiveness has set in.
Cut to the opening
credits accompanied by a song called Bom diggy diggy, during which Sonu and Titu drum the bums of dozens of women who shake those butts in vibratory movements aimed at the
camera, each other and the boys.
What comes next is
from the same old mould, just much louder, more garish and even more open about
its contempt for women than Ranjan’s earlier films.
When Titu asks his
parents to find him a bride, Sonu asks why he needs to marry when he could just
change his cook, they have already bought a new washing machine and dishwasher,
and alternative arrangements could well be made for sex. I guess you have to
grant it to Ranjan for frankly acknowledging what most Indians do not: that
these motivations are indeed what prompt many men to marry.
The
lack of pretence continues all the way up to the song playing along with the
end credits, when Sonu, Titu and Sweety dance together to the Yo Yo Honey Singh
track Chhote chhote peg. “Itne der se baitha bas mind main tera padd
ra hoon (all this while I have been reading your mind),” a male voice sings
as Sonu stares pointedly and reductively at Sweety’s almost bare breasts,
because hey, that is where a woman’s mind resides, I guess?
While the director
makes no bones about his desire to cash in on the deep-seated resentment
towards women among a section of the film-viewing audience, I doubt whether the
homosexual undertones of the Sonu-Titu bhaichaara
were planned. Sonu’s lurving gaze could be read either way, but what else
is one to make of the song Tera yaar hoon
main playing as a moony Sonu watches Titu with Sweety?
Tu
jo roottha,
Toh
kaun hasega.
Tu
jo chhoota,
Toh
kaun rahega.
Tu
chup hai toh,
Yeh
darr lagta hai.
Apna
mujhko,
Ab
kaun kahega.
Tu
hi wajah tere bina,
Bewajah
bekaar hoon main.
Tera
yaar hoon main.
Tera yaar hoon main.
Translation:
If you are
displeased,
Who will laugh?
If I lose you,
Who will I have?
When you fall silent,
I get afraid,
Now who will call
me his?
You are my reason,
Without you I am
nothing.
I am your friend.
I am your friend.
Commercial Hindi
cinema sorely needs a homosexual romance, but not an unwitting one. The
impression of a gaymance in Sonu Ke Titu
Ki Sweety comes not from a well-meaning director’s deliberate intent. It is
a product of poor acting and writing.
It is possible that Ranjan may
make a better film some day, once he recovers from his raging hatred towards
women and realises that in giving vent to that feeling, he is also repeatedly portraying men as manipulable fools and cowards. The
unfortunate part of Sonu Ke Titu Ki
Sweety is that in small patches – especially in a scene in which Ishita
Raj’s character Pihu is re-acquainted with Titu’s family – it shows a
penchant for humour and good timing. Mostly
though, this is a tacky, trite recycling of a recipe that has brought
box-office success twice to this director. Why bother writing an original
script when a photocopy machine is at hand?
Rating
(out of five stars): 1/2
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CBFC Rating (India):
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UA
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Running time:
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140 minutes 23 seconds
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This review was also published on Firstpost:
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