Nobody asked for my review - Param Sundari
Note - Spoilers Ahead
Compelled to see for myself what the issue was, I booked a ticket to watch it—a decision I would come to deeply regret later.
Directed by Tushar Jalota and produced by Maddock Films, the movie stars
Sidharth Malhotra, Janhvi Kapoor, Sanjay Kapoor, Manjot Singh, Renji Panicker, and Tanvi Ram, among others.
The story of Param Sundari is as simple as it gets. It follows the life of a
rich guy, played by the ever-dashing, gym-bodied, easy-on-the-eyes Sidharth
Malhotra as Param. Living off his father's money, he essentially plays the part
of an Angel Investor (with his father's money, of course) and tries to support startups in need of funding.
A new company with its app, 'Find Your Soulmate' (0 points for creativity), is an app that (wait until you hear this) helps you find your soulmate.
They ask Param for the money, and Param, to prove to his father that this
company will indeed be the one that earns him millions, sets out to put his
life at stake (quite literally) when he uses the app to find his soulmate, so
that his father believes in the app and invests money.
AI, Machine Learning, and the combined efforts of psychologists,
neuroscientists, and doctors involved in this app have put in their might
together to find a soulmate for this Punjabi Munda.
And they get one! (a 100% match by the way)
With his 100% matched soulmate in mind, Param sets out to find her and win her heart (in true Bollywood style). Whether he makes her fall in love with him, how he does it, and the obstacles he faces along the way form the rest of the movie.
The movie as a whole seems like the 2025 version of Chennai
Express or Two States (take your pick) with a north Indian boy-meets-South
Indian girl love story. Chennai Express and Two States also relied on the same broad
generalizations and stereotypes forced down on the audience, and aimed to make
a joke out of them. They, too, had their flaws, but they somehow connected with the audience through their more authentic portrayal of the characters.
Param Sundari, though? It just goes a level lower. I mean,
this is 2025. Is a little research and not being stereotypical too much to ask
from the Hindi Film Industry?
Apart from the whole climbing-the-coconut-tree scene, 24/7
saree-clad Janhvi (no one wears sarees all the time, honestly), befriending the
elephant, geography issues (they are in Nangiarkulangara, and the waterfall they visit sometimes looks like Athirappilly waterfalls—which is 157 km away and a five-hour drive, yet they reach it in two minutes), and half-baked characters, my main contention with the movie was that they allowed Janhvi Kapoor to speak in Malayalam.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fluent speaker myself. Being
born and brought up outside of Kerala, my Malayalam is a little broken, but I
can hold a conversation and speak well. Sundari, being born and brought up in
Kerala, speaks worse than I do. It's SO BAD. I'm not joking.
Calling a Mundu "MundU" or Kalaripayattu "KalaripayattU" is not something you expect a Malayali-born-and-raised kid to say.
It's fine if you can't speak Malayalam. A language barrier
should not get in the way of art. Plus, that's why you have dubbing artists.
And I get when actors want to do it all by themselves. That's commendable, but
why they couldn't have a diction teacher or language teacher on the set just
goes above my head.
At one point, Janhvi literally says, "Ammachan paranju." She wanted to say "Amma-Achan paranju" (mother and father said), but she says it without a pause, making it sound like she's referring to the relative Ammachan (Ammachan means Mothers brother)
Funnily enough, Janhvi’s Hindi pronunciation is a thousand times better here compared to her Malayalam (make it make sense), laying bare the absolute lack of
preparation that went into creating this movie.
Janhvi speaking bad Malayalam is something that really irked
me during my viewing. But there are worse people in the movies. Her sister, who
is shown as a gen-alpha(?), speaks Malayalam way less than Janhvi in the
movie, but it is still bad. And the to-be groom of Janhvi, who is also a Malayali, just cannot speak Malayalam properly. At this point in the movie, I
am no longer surprised at the ignorance they have showcased throughout the film
by putting no effort into it.
Another issue is Janhvi wanting to be a Mohiniyattam dancer. That has been her lifelong dream. And yet, except for this one time where she MIGHT have actually danced the correct classical dance, the rest of the scenes where she is supposed to perform Mohiniyattam are just a mix of classical dances conveniently labeled as Mohiniyattam.
The music and songs were catchy and fun, I'll agree, and were possibly the only redemption in this two-hour-long Kerala Tourism ad. That, and Renji Panicker, when he spoke Malayalam in his scenes as his character of a Kalaripayattu Ashaan (Teacher).
Sundari Pillai may not have caused as much damage as Shalini Unnikrishnan (which is another story for another day), but what could have been a great film showcasing the beauty of the two cultures melding and highlighting Kerala's culture and language just turned out to be a major disaster.
By flattening its leads into stereotypes and refusing to explore the authentic struggles of intercultural love, Param Sundari becomes a
half-baked story. It had all the ingredients—romance, culture, conflict, and an
opportunity to explore what love really looks like when two worlds collide. But
in trying to replicate the same formula of earlier successes, it
forgot what made them magical: characters who felt human first, cultural
symbols second.
In the end, Param Sundari doesn’t just fail its characters;
it fails its audience, who deserved a love story that reflected truth instead
of a masquerade.
At one point, Janhvi Kapoor retorts to Param and his friend when they talk about South India as just one place, as if all of it were the same. You can see the frustration and the anger on her face. Oh man, how I wish you could see the frustration on my face too :)
.
Okay, rant over.
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