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