Ginny Weds Sunny Review: Every Shaadi Rom-Com Cliche Ever in One Place

Desi families have an age-radar. After one crosses a certain age, family and nosy relatives start pestering their kids about getting married. Cliches like “umar nikal jayegi”, “ab nahi to kab?” and “teri shaadi ke bina choti behen ki shaadi kaise hogi?” are common. Conversations around marriage have taken centre stage in the Sethi family too, and the target is their son Satnam a.k.a Sunny.

Sunny’s father (Rajiv Gupta) wants his future daughter-in-law to abandon her career after marriage, and become a partner in the restaurant that his son would own. When matchmaker Shobha Juneja (Ayesha Raza Mishra) taunts him for holding outdated views, he defends himself saying, “We are very modern, we have an automatic car and even our mobile has 4G connection.”

Ginny Weds Sunny packs such witty punches here and there, in a plot that is more predictable than the results of the 2019 General Elections in India. Most desi kids are fed up of being asked “Shaadi kab kar rahe ho?” but Sunny (Vikrant Massey) can’t wait to get married and begs his family to get his wedding arranged. Sunny’s father approaches Shobha (middle-class Sima Taparia) who finds out that Sunny has a childhood crush on her daughter Ginny (Yami Gautam). But Ginny wants a love marriage so Shobha and Sunny go behind her back and plot to arrange… a love marriage.

In what can only be described as mom-approved-stalking (and coaching), Sunny follows Ginny inside the metro, at a Haldirams shop (#brandplacement), shows up at her office and manages to woo her with a bunch of cheesy lines that would make Shahrukh Khan proud… in 1997.

Every possible trope that one can possibly think of in a shaadi wala rom-com exists in Ginny Weds Sunny

While Sunny is supposed to be the underconfident Delhi boy who sucks at flirting and romance, at unexpected moments into the movie, they all break into a song where he suddenly shows off cool dancing skills, only to become an underconfident aashiq once again. Badshah, Mika Singh, and Neha Kakkar team up to remake and ruin another classic in 2020 (ironically, the original is a Mika Singh song). The songs completely break the flow of a plot that is already in the ICU.

Just when things hit off between Sunny and Ginny, and it seems like they’ll get married, the ex who has a change of heart makes a re-entry into Ginny’s life and proposes marriage. Of course. If you were to play a drinking game to predict the next twist in the movie, one would be drunk within the first hour itself.

Every possible trope that one can possibly think of in a shaadi wala rom-com exists in Ginny Weds Sunny. The heroine has to choose between the hero and the ex but she can’t make up her mind. When she leans towards Sunny, she finds out he had been scheming with her mom, so now she doesn’t ‘trust’ him either. The hero decides to move on and reluctantly marry someone else. Ginny shows up at his wedding and they both realise they are made for each other. The mother of all tropes is when the dulhan, who obviously can’t be seen because of the ghunghat, is secretly changed. And obviously, they find it out after the first few pheras are already done. In a pandemic where everything is uncertain, this is the most predictable film one can find.

The saving grace of the film is the performance from Ayesha Raza Mishra as the sassy matchmaker-mom and the lead couple, Yami Gautam and Vikrant Massey. The writers Navjot Gulati and Sumit Arora have given nice quirks to certain characters, like the ex Nishant, who begins every discussion with, “I have only three things to say”, and the neighbour Sumeet who is ever ready for a swordfight. The Punjabi element to the movie jumps out in certain dialogues like, “We Punjabis are left with only two things: emotions and paneer”. In one scene, Shobha reminds us that for Punjabi parents, love trounces logic at times.

One will definitely have to abandon logic, to sit through this film. Hopefully, love for the cast will sail you through.