Param Sundari review: Familiar tropes, flat emotions and a story that never takes off!

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Sakshi Sharma
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Param Sundari review

If you asked AI to create a film that looks and feels like Chennai Express and DDLJ with a touch of Roja, the result would be Param Sundari, a film that mistakes stereotypes for story and ends up sounding and looking hollow!

It’s nothing new for Bollywood to fall into the trap of stereotypes and clichés, especially when it comes to rom-coms. And it’s not entirely wrong, because in reality, we still often operate from stereotypical understanding of people, where a Punjabi is associated with balle balle or the entire South is treated as one homogeneous block. So, when a Punjabi boy meets a Malayali girl in a Bollywood rom-com, cultural stereotypes are bound to come up. But this is also a time where pan-Indian content is celebrated, and audiences today are far more aware of basics like there are five distinct states in South India, each with its own culture. So while Chennai Express, despite its stereotypical take, might have worked almost 10 years ago, a Param Sundari that still works on the same template, doesn’t, especially because it neither feels original nor convincing in its execution.

Since time immemorial, the template has been the same - a clueless boy meets a mature girl, and everything changes in his life. DDLJeternalised this, Chennai Express brought in a new dynamic to this as it showcased that for opposites to attract why force a cross-country story, the clash of cultures within India itself should be enough. And Param Sundari wants to take this forward for the new generation. So, once again, we get a Delhi boy, Param (Sidharth Malhotra), rooted in his North Indian blindness, cracking crass jokes, living as the privileged son of a businessman, and trying to prove he’ll be the next unicorn founder. In a world where finding partners has become a game of swiping left and right, it feels inevitable that he’d find his soulmate on an app. But that’s not the conflict here! The problem arises when Param’s father forces him to find his soulmate through this app, in exchange for seed money to fund his start-up. This takes Param to Kerala where he meets his soulmate - Thekkepattu Sundari Damodaram Pillai, aka Sundari (Janhvi Kapoor), an angry young woman, fiercely protective of her land and her people. Anyone who dares to stereotype Kerala or lump it into a broad idea of “South India” is immediately met with either her sharp monologues or her metaphorical knife. What follows is a series of playful banter between Param and Sundari, as he desperately tries to win her over in hopes of unlocking the funding for his business. What he doesn’t see coming, however, is his feelings for her when her old flame returns. 

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The conversation around this film has been varied, from Janhvi Kapoor’s miscast Malayali representation to the Sachin-Jigar music album that sounds stitched together from A.R. Rahman’s songs. The truth is, the film is guilty on all counts, and more. It isn’t just Kapoor who doesn’t work as a Malayali; the entire film reduces Kerala’s rich culture into a glossy box of stereotypes. Even Sundari’s Gen Alpha sister isn’t spared, who is turned into yet another caricature, just like every other Malayali, existing only as a prop for cringe comedy and shallow ideas of representation. And Kerala itself feels like the tagline “God’s Own Country” has been taken too literally as every five minutes, there’s another wide shot celebrating its beauty, making the film look more like a tourism ad than a story with a genuine setting.

If Pardesiya feels like a medley of Rahman’s hits, then the film itself borrows heavily from SRK’s lineage of romances where a love traingle makes the stakes higher. Sidharth Malhotra plays a new-age version of Raj or Rahul, while Janhvi Kapoor seems to be playing a Malayali echo of Meenamma from Chennai Express. That might not have been a problem if the film had built on these references with genuine emotion. But unlike Padukone, Kapoor looks desperate to impress with her efforts of a “rooted” performance, Malhotra wears the same expression throughout, and together they feel entirely out of place while having hardly any chemistry. Moreover, the idea of setting a North meets South rom-com against the backdrop of start-up culture where hustle creates loneliness and technology disconnects you from life, is promising. But the film undercuts it by treating us as an audience that tech has only made dumber, spoon-feeding every emotion instead of letting us feel it.

So, unlike SRK romances, Param Sundari directed by Tushar Jalota and produced by Maddock, is painfully flat, far too busy following a predictable pattern to create anything original or emotionally relatable, almost making you wonder it's made by AI. Worst of all, the film treats this khichdi of clichés as an ode where an Onam boat race climaxes with “Yeh Dil Deewana,” a Kalaripayattu ground is reduced to slapstick, and a church is repurposed as a backdrop for romance. Instead of an authentic celebration of love and culture, what you get is parody dressed up as homage for Malayali’s and for everything that you love in a typical bollywood rom-com!

Param Sundari is now running in theatres near you!

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Param Sundari Janhvi Kapoor Sidharth Malhotra chennai express