Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari Review | Predictable, Deeply Unfelt, And Hammed Up

Sunny (Varun Dhawan) and Tulsi (Janhvi Kapoor), still in love with their exes, Ananya (Sanya Malhotra) and Vikram (Rohit Saraf), unite to crash the latter pair’s arranged marriage. In the process of ruining their wedding to win their former lovers back, Sunny and Tulsi fall for each other instead. This plotline was easily evident from the manner in which the film’s trailer was cut. Nothing, then, is unpredictable and emotions surface without being carefully built. When Sunny gets heartbroken or Tulsi is cruelly addressed, when either find comfort in the other or forms a connection, the spectator never experiences the veracity of their emotions. Alternately, if one tracks the songs to reach the heart of the film, one concludes that songs appear only to be promptly forgotten.

Malhotra and Saraf bring occasional relief, but the camera is uninterested in staying and following Ananya and Vikram. The screenplay is uneven because to weave affection and adoration between Sunny and Tulsi in a film where present and past love is deeply entangled, the old flames demand screen space and better characterisation. Creating a hierarchy between the lead pair and a corresponding second pair is narratively and cinematically detrimental to Shashank Khaitan’s Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari.

The nerdy, modest Tulsi’s flirtation with fun, her refrain in the beginning “maza aa raha hai” (“I’m having fun”) which hinted at her delight in performing a version of herself she rarely let loose remains unexplored. What kind of temporary delight does she get from winning her ex over by wrecking his marriage? The spectator is as clueless as Tulsi. Sunny’s monologue against arranged marriage is poorly written and evokes little feeling, except a smirking spectator, who speculates that if these filmmakers were to make DDLJ, Maratha Mandir would have become famous for not playing it even once. 

As the Holi themed song “panwadi” ends, we witness the two pairs under the influence of bhang, engaging in a small interaction with each other. While the girls talk about both the boys, Vikram and Sunny speak only of the loveliness of Tulsi. It is frustrating to watch the script tilt so heavily towards an actor (Janhvi Kapoor), sacrificing another character (Ananya) at her altar. This small sequence reveals an artistically corrupt decision, where the script alters according to the supposed logic of stardom,with Kapoor placed above Malhotra. Such a parallelly intercut scene, with its singularity in the film, suggests Sunny and Vikram are comparable in their qualities, even though they differ in compatibility with Tulsi, but the same cannot be said of Ananya and Tulsi, where one is positioned as more desirable. 

The lone star in the rating above is for the kiss shared between Tulsi and Sunny on the school field to the shock of the principal, a mischievous visual marker to censor board’s reaction to intimacy in cinema. The students clap as Sunny picks up Tulsi in his arms and the film finishes. It ends leaving this spectator gladly excusing herself from watching another minute of hammed up performances by Dhawan and Kapoor.