Welcome To New York

In Welcome to New York, Teji (Diljit Dosanjh), a Sikh simpleton who thinks he’s a good actor, and struggling fashion designer Jeenal (Sonakshi Sinha), win a talent hunt contest at the IIFA Awards — where Karan Johar gets kidnapped by his doppelganger.

Yes, the movie is as silly as its premise. And yes, as if you couldn’t guess, there are a gazillion celebrity cameos.

Welcome to New York is a special film, I suppose. One specifically made to congratulate and stand in awe of the Bollywood film fraternity. The unending reverence to Bollywood and its stars, which spans the entirety of the movie, is almost nauseating.

One of the plot’s biggest impediments — the IIFA Awards — are wedged deep into the story, as if the movie is a part of its promotional campaign. Scenes often intercut with celebrities entering five-star hotel lobbies, getting ready at rehearsals or laughing at heard-it-before jokes at the award show. The level of star-worship and the constant branding of the award show cement the credibility of the premise, but it also compromises the core plot about Teji and Jeenal.

Welcome To New York stands too much in awe of the Bollywood film fraternity while Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety is a surprisingly fun little picture

The experience is jarring, and only occasionally funny. Teji and Jeenal are a fun couple, but the story (most of it stitched together in the edit) nose-dives when the plot moves to Karan Johar and his gangster-lookalike from New York.

Meanwhile, Lara Dutta, playing a vendetta-prone executive of the show, is fine but her motivations are fickle — much like the entire premise of Welcome to New York.

Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety

Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety (a tongue-twister of a title) is, astonishingly, a fun little picture. Sonu (Kartik Aaryaan) and Titu (Sunny Singh) are brother-like-friends since childhood. Sonu is smart, sly and successful while Titu is simple-minded and love-prone, finding himself locked in bad, manipulative relationships.

One day out of the blue, Titu finds real love in a girl introduced by his family. The girl, Sweety (Nushrat Bharucha), turns out to be the perfect girl-next-door: a smart, occasionally sexy, intelligent, good-hearted young woman who wins over everyone with nary any effort.

Sonu, who has been over-protective of Titu since their pre-school days, smells a rat. A girl who is too good to be true is a stuff of fiction, he deduces. His judgment is right on the money.

Sweety is cunning and manipulative, capable of outsmarting Sonu and Titu’s entire family, yet one can deduce that she’s not entirely evil. That doesn’t stop a bromance-verses-romance battle for Titu’s affections, though.

Co-writer and director Luv Ranjan (Pyaar Ka Punchnama, and its sequel) makes Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety a lighthearted romp with the stamina of an adrenaline-pumped gerbil. The screenplay whizzes around at lightning speed, keeping one’s interest glued to Sonu and Sweety’s battle of wits, even when the story runs out of juice after the intermission break.

The premise’s somewhat misogynistic, juvenile, male-only perspective suits the narrative’s point of view. The story isn’t a battle of the sexes (though in superficial terms it is exactly that); the plot is more about saving a friend from imminent disaster.

While the acting isn’t pitch perfect (Alok Nath, playing the foul-mouthed grandfather being one exception), the pace, twisting narrative and the characters’ idiosyncrasies mask most of the plot’s pitfalls. The pros outnumber the cons by a vast margin — and in today’s cinema that’s a rarity worth investing in.

Published in Dawn, ICON, March 4th, 2018