At his sister’s wedding, the Indian American doctor Naveen is asked the inevitable question: when you will marry a nice Indian girl? Naveen, being gay, wonders what it would be like if he brought home a nice Indian boy instead.
Naveen (Karan Soni) does find an excellent specimen of niceness – with an Indian connection too. The photographer Jay (Jonathan Groff) is the white, adopted son of Indian parents. Jay’s enthusiasm for his cultural heritage is evident in his love for Aditya Chopra’s Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge – a movie that Naveen dismisses as corny and “absurd”.
Roshan Sethi’s A Nice Boy wants to channelise the “bigness of love” that makes DDLJ so iconic for Jay through a low-key drama about acceptance and adjustment. Originally titled A Nice Indian Boy, the English movie made by North Americans of Indian heritage meanders along on the strength of observational humour and efficient performances.
Eric Randall’s screenplay is adapted from Madhuri Shekar’s play of the same name. Without the usual sources of conflict – shock over Naveen’s sexual identity, the prospect of welcoming a foreigner into the household – the movie struggles to justify itself at times.
Since Jay is already semi-Indianised, the consternation expressed by Naveen’s parents Megha (Zarna Garg) and Archit (Harish Patel) falls flat. Naveen’s sister Arundhathi (Sunita Mani) has a more valid reason to react badly to Jay, but that too feels contrived.
Contrivance is also the quality of the Bollywood romances that A Nice Boy is too fond off to subvert or ignore altogether. Hindi cinema itself has progressed considerably since the conservative values embraced by DDLJ.
At least A Nice Boy addresses the problems faced by Naveen and Jay without taking forever to get to the point. The movie is 96 minutes long, just about enough time to explore Naveen’s angst but not lengthy enough to adequately examine Naveen’s parents or Arundhathi – or even Jay for that matter.
Some big names are attached to the modest production – Jonathan Groff, the star of Glee and Mindhunter; Karan Soni, who played the taxi driver Dopinder in the Deadpool films; the accomplished Sunita Mani; breakout stand-up comic Zarna Garg; the veteran Harish Patel. Justin Baldoni is among the producers.
A Nice Boy is a curio for local viewers who might wonder what it is like to be of Indian origin, gay and a Bollywood fan in America. They might still be left wondering after it’s done. A Nice Boy is keen on not being that overly sappy Bollywood movie, but it’s too rushed and sketchy to be a convincing account of the Indian American experience.
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