Sure enough the repartees in "Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety" (SKTKS) just roll off the characters' tongues making them sound sassy and sombre even when they are being mean and vicious just because it suits the script's purposes.Īnd God knows, this film needs no excuse to let the words flow. When sharply written, these words can embrace the characters in layers of unvarnished molten gold.
I’m going with three out of five.There is something to be said in favour of the spoken word in the movies, or the dialogue as its known.
I was uncomfortable with its decidedly women-bashing stand, but I enjoyed the film’s silly, relentless humor. Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety has a strange kind of earnestness in its juvenile ambitions. Nushrat Bharucha manages to hold her own, despite little help from the script, and Sunny Singh has a nice presence although he has very little heavy lifting to do. He does a perfectly good job, not least because the script is skewed unfairly in Sonu’s favor. Of the principal cast, Kartik Aryan has the tough job of making Sonu a relatable, likeable figure despite his misdeeds. Alok Nath, in particular, is a real hoot, sending up his ‘sanskari’ image, playing a hard-drinking, swearing old man. Most memorable of this lot are Alok Nath as Titu’s grandfather Ghasitaram and Virendra Saxena as Ghasitaram’s best friend Lalu. There’s also a big ensemble of supporting characters in the form of Titu’s family. The film is consistently funny, with clever lines thrown about at lightning speed. Early on in the film, when confronted with a similar situation, Titu says it to Sonu in so many words: “Yeh tera mother instinct hai mere liye.”īut if the uproarious laughter from the audience watching the film in my cinema was any indication, they’re not giving it this much thought. Could it be that perhaps he is in love with her himself? Or, more interestingly, that he is in love with Titu? The first option would be too obvious, the second the filmmakers aren’t brave enough to explore. Occasionally you wonder if one of two possibilities might, in fact, be the real reason for Sonu going to war on Sweety. You see it was never a level playing field to begin with. Sonu, however, gets away with all manner of crafty plotting because his actions are for the larger cause of friendship. “Chanakya ki maa hai yeh aurat,” Sonu says of Sweety at one point, referring to the shrewd lengths she will go to in this one-upmanship for a place in Titu’s life. What’s problematic is that we’re already prejudiced against the woman and conditioned to side with the best friend. This desi version sees rivals Sweety and Sonu use everything from sex to an ex to tilt the scales in their favor. It’s an interesting idea, but one that’s powered a few Hollywood rom-coms already, including 2001’s Saving Silverman starring Jason Biggs and Amanda Peet. When Sunny agrees to an arranged marriage with Sweety (Nushrat Bharucha), and clearly begins falling for her, Sonu is convinced that she can’t be as nice as she appears, and becomes determined to break them up before wedding bells toll.
His best friend Titu (Sunny Singh) frequently falls in love, but Sonu invariably swoops in and ‘protects’ him when things get too serious. He’s suspicious of women, and for him they only serve one purpose. Sonu (Kartik Aryan) is the sort of fella who’s likely paid close attention to the director’s previous films. In the new film however, that understanding is threatened when a seemingly perfect girl becomes a thorn in the lifelong friendship between two male friends. Ranjan, who has turned the ‘battle of the sexes’ premise into a full-fledged, thriving genre of its own, operates from the most simplistic kind of frat-boy logic where bros always come before hoes. The second is that despite the sexism, the objectionable stereotyping, and the frequent misogyny, the film is unquestionably funny. The first is that women are always the enemy. There are two things you should know about Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety, although if you’ve watched director Luv Ranjan’s Pyaar Ka Punchnama and its sequel it should come as no surprise whatsoever. Cast: Kartik Aryan, Sunny Singh, Nushrat Bharucha, Ishita Sharma, Alok Nath, Virendra Saxena, Deepika Amin, Ayesha Raza