Param Sundari (2025), starring Sidharth Malhotra and Janhvi Kapoor in lead roles, is positioned as a romantic comedy.
Param, a wayward second-generation entrepreneur, loves investing his father’s wealth in new startup ideas—one being an AI-driven app designed to find soulmates. To test the app’s worth, Param tries it with his own profile, which pairs him with Sundari.
The premise: a North Indian boy from Delhi searching for his soulmate through an AI app, which leads him to a South Indian girl from Kerala. On paper, it had all the markings of a romantic comedy.
The casting was top-notch. Two strong actors who could’ve pulled off meaty roles with ease. Yet when I sat down to watch, I ended up fast-forwarding through the first 30 minutes, skipping to the last 20, and only dipping into random sequences in between. And I’m someone who sat through the entire runtime of Chennai Express (2013), so my appetite for formulaic romance is fairly generous.
This isn’t a review. It’s a rumination by a disappointed audience.
First, the lead pair—the crucial ingredient in any romance story. Casting Sidharth Malhotra and Janhvi Kapoor was as good as winning half the battle.
Second, the music. It worked. The packaging—from background score to soundtracks—captured the South Indian vibe. The last time I felt the music clicked this well with a comedy’s spirit was Andaz Apna Apna (1994). To be fair, I’m not taking into account A. R. Rahman, who has mastered the art of integrating music into the story itself. Also, Vidhu Vinod Chopra, who doesn’t settle for anything less than perfection. So, keeping these two perfectionists aside, most films’ music—despite being chartbusters—are just independent compositions that could fit into any other story or film.
Then the central premise: “Opposites Attract.” Even the story arc was promising. As an audience, we knew the truth would eventually surface—that Param had been testing the app when he first met Sundari. The foreshadowing was built in.
The decision to let South Indian characters speak in their own language rather than defaulting to Hindi was another good call.
So why didn’t it work?
At a fundamental level, the central theme of the story was soulmate. And when a romance story is built around this theme, it has to have an element of fate as a character in the story—what Serendipity (2001), Veer-Zaara (2004), Rockstar (2011), and La La Land (2016) managed to pull off so well. Unfortunately, the element of fate was substituted by AI in Param Sundari. But that could be my subjective grief. So let’s put that aside and move on.
The most critical aspect of a rom-com is the romance. And that’s exactly where the film crumbled. Not a single moment between Param and Sundari felt genuine. Every scene echoed some other movie we’ve already seen a dozen times.
Romance stories follow certain commandments:
- Boy Meets Girl – The Meet Cute
- Boy and Girl fall in love
- Boy and Girl fight and walk away
- Boy and Girl reach a point of no return
- Transformation
- Reunion
The meet-cute, the hit-and-miss, the sting of separation, the catharsis of reunion—these are the lifeblood of the genre. When the very first meeting feels recycled, it’s as good as throwing in the towel. The filmmakers seemed to bet that the leads’ popularity would be enough to carry the film.
The problem is bigger than this one movie. Most Indian rom-coms aren’t written from lived intimacy. They’re written like fan fiction at a café—writers trading references to their favorite meet-cutes instead of drawing from heartbreak, awkward first dates, or real longing. Which is why so many scenes feel photocopied instead of lived.
Take the scene where Param and Sundari, stranded, seek refuge inside a church. So far, fine. But then Param urges her to dance. She obliges. Cue romantic closeness. And I wondered—if a Christian couple kissed inside a Hindu temple, would it not spark outrage? Why, in the name of humor, do we disregard cultural resonance? Was the church integral to the story, or just a convenient “cool” backdrop? When moments repel instead of resonate, that’s not bold—it’s lazy writing.
Then there’s the climax sequence. As an actor, Janhvi did what she could, but as a character, it felt so disconnected.
The climax sequence shows Sundari conflicted about her marriage to a childhood friend and her love for Param. She’s troubled, confused, and nursing pain. Then the troubles get sorted and her path is cleared so she can admit to her love for Param. But Param is on the run, being chased by the villagers, who could have happily stopped if Sundari had said so. Nevertheless, Sundari comes from the other side to protect Param, who jumps into the river to get away from the villagers. Sundari helps him get on the boat. She’s mad at him for risking his life. Param says her love would not let him drown. And just like that, Sundari breaks into laughter. Because it’s the climax and needs a happy ending, she had to be normal again. So she laughs heartily. It didn’t matter why.
This same laziness infects the film’s character construction. When writers borrow scenes from other movies, they inevitably borrow characters too—and that’s exactly what happened here.
Sidharth proved his range in Kapoor & Sons and Shershaah. Janhvi delivered in Good Luck Jerry and Mr. & Mrs. Mahi. Both have what it takes to make us believe in love. But actors stand on the shoulders of writers and directors—and here, those shoulders gave way.
Take Param. He’s fairly well-defined: the wealthy son who never takes things seriously, obsessed with launching ventures. A flawed hero with redeemable qualities. His external goal is clear—make his startup work. Even his attempt to woo Sundari fits, since the app identifies her as his soulmate.
Sundari, meanwhile, runs a homestay but feels out of place. Her external goal: to pursue Mohiniyattam, Kerala’s classical dance form.
But once you strip away these external goals, you’re left with a blank slate. No internal drives, no deeper motives, nothing that defines them beyond caricature. Romance as a genre demands two protagonists who transform each other’s lives in ways that matter. Here, they remain archetypes: the Delhi boy with too much money, the Kerala girl tied to tradition.
Supporting characters don’t fare better. The strict guardian, the fun-loving father, the shadowing friend, the community-approved suitor—they all feel imported wholesale from other rom-coms.
With so much money, effort, and talent on screen, of course the makers expected audiences to embrace the film. But this is the blind spot of contemporary filmmaking: too much faith in packaging, too little in the product itself.
It’s easy to say audiences have evolved, that old-school love stories no longer work. Yet Korean dramas, South Indian cinema, and other emerging industries are still telling romances that move people. The uncomfortable truth is that many storytellers in Bollywood and Hollywood lack the passion and drive for human stories. Commerce swallows creativity like Pac-Man.
Genuine romantic writing requires writers who understand the messy complexity of relationships:
- how a Delhi entrepreneur actually talks when vulnerable,
- how cultural differences spark both attraction and friction,
- how people bridge the gap between digital connections and physical chemistry.
It requires observing real behavior: awkward silences, cultural miscommunications that are funny because they’re true, the ways people genuinely navigate differences.
Most importantly, romance carries a responsibility: to make people believe in love. When writing suspends disbelief enough to take the audience there, it has done its job.