Sunny loves Ananya. Tulsi loves Vikram. Ananya breaks up with Sunny. Vikram breaks up with Tulsi. The families of Ananya and Vikram arrange their marriage. Sunny and Tulsi pose as a couple to rile their exes and thereby win them back.
From this simple, time-tested formula, Shashank Khaitan concocts Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari. Although the Hindi movie doesn’t always pop and crackle, it has old-fashioned romance, many hilarious lines (the dialogue is by Khaitan and Ishita Moitra) and a hero who is able and willing to steer the events.
Sunny Sanskari (Varun Dhawan) is a jeweller’s son with a knack for accurately assessing the value of jewels. But Sunny has been unable to see what is front of him. What he regards as a proper relationship with Ananya (Sanya Malhotra) is a situationship for her.
Tulsi Kumari (Janhvi Kapoor) has been with Vikram (Rohit Saraf) for much longer, but his wealthy family doesn’t care for her. Tulsi is described as middle class but that’s always up for debate, given her bottomless wardrobe and make-up budget.
The pretend couple hopes to turn the blood of their exes green, as Sunny declares, but the 136-minute movie appears to have run out of ideas by the interval itself. How much longer can the quadrangular dance be stretched before it becomes a duet?
Various secondary characters – Maniesh Paul as a garrulous, glad-handing wedding planner, Abhinav Sharma as the hero’s mandatory best friend, Akshay Oberoi as Vikram’s disapproving brother – feed the runtime until it bloats. Khaitan even sneaks in speeches about female emancipation before remembering to resolve the confusion over who ends up with whom.
Rohit Saraf and Sanya Malhotra get enough attention, ensuring that they are equal participants rather than bystanders. Janhvi Kapoor valiantly tries to match Varun’s Dhawan’s comedic timing and utter ease with slipping between silly scenes and moist-eyed moments. The long-winded title promises a saga about two people, but the film is a Sunny Sanskari show.
Varun Dhawan has the best lines, the best situations, the best dance moves, the best everything. The real love story in Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari is between Dhawan and material that is perfectly suited to his skill set.
Dhawan is fully alert and entirely in form in a film that is most alive whenever he is around. Although Sunny’s effortless charm doesn’t always work on Ananya, it carries the movie all the way through.
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