Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety Movie Review: Luv Ranjan’s Wreck-Tangle Is Wickedly Funny!

Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety

Starring Kartik Aryan, Nushrat Bharucha, Sunny Singh

Directed by Luv Ranjan

Rating: 4 and a half stars

There is  something  to be said  in favour of the spoken word in the movies, or the dialogue as its known.When sharply written, these words can embrace the characters in  layers of unvarnished  molten  gold.

Sure enough the repartees in Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety(SKTKS)  just roll off the characters’ tongues making them sound  sassy and sombre even when they are being mean and vicious just because it suits the script’s purposes.

And  God knows, this film needs no excuse to let the words flow.So full marks to co-writer Rahul Mody and  Luv Ranjan for investing the vivacious proceedings with a  verbal gusto that I found to be  more sparkling in  wit and insinuations than the dialogues  in any recent film.

SKTKS is the story of the eponymous Titu(Sunny Singh, suitably equanimous) who is  a  bit of a rich spoilt dullard mithaiwala’s son who falls in  love with every human being in a skirt, the shorter the better. It takes Titu’s  BFF Sonu(Kartik Aryan) to rescue Titu from his  disastrous  relationship crises  time after time.

At one point in the slyly silken storytelling Kartik’s Sonu tells  the manipulative gold digger a story of what he did  to a boy in the classroom as a child when that  boy troubled Titu.

Clearly this a bromance of extraordinary intensity and Kartik and Sunny  Singh specially the former, plays the brothers-born-from-different-mothers with a ferocious fidelity never allowing gay  insinuations  colour their camaraderie.

Luv Ranjan  is  very clear  in his reading of  ‘bromantic’ relationships. The woman is often a gold-digging manipulative scheming  bitch.NushratBharucha    plays the part  with relish.  It’s her ongoing game of oneupmanship with  Kartik Aryan’s Sonu that  gives a thundering heft to the plot, lifting even the  sagging episodes(like the pre-marriage bachelor party in Amsterdam which stretches into a blingy binge) to a  zestful place filled with sexy sounds and  seductive  images of  from privileged homes where no one has to bother about anything except the next holiday abroad.

 Luv Ranjan  is terrific at shooting family dynamics  during festive times. The wedding-time  negotiations  , backbiting and meal/alcohol consumption occupy  a  major  part  of  narrative. There is  a  kind of compelling clarity  to the  way Ranjan  pins down the inner workings  of relationships  in  joint families about to come together  through  a  marital alliance.

Of course  it helps  that character actors from Alok Nath(abandoning his  bovine  image to play  a wickedly irreverent  grandfather) to Pritam Jaiswal(as an annoyingly efficient  house help who  is manipulated  out of the household)  add character  to every scene they occupy. Indeed this is   not so much a triangle  as a wreck-tangle with every  supporting actor  egging on  the central conflict among  a two men who just can’t stop loving one  another and a woman , who will tear them apart at any cost.

Nushrat Bharucha’s deftly enacted Sweety admits at one  point she is not the heroine but the villain. So does she get her hero or does she get her comeuppance? The answer my friend, is blowing in the wink.Tongue lodged firmly in  cheek, Luv Ranjan’s bromance-versus-romance tale has enough bite to make it one of the most invigorating  rom-coms  in recent times.