It’s 2025, and Bollywood is still peddling the trope of two youngsters pretending to be lovers just to make their exes jealous. Shashank Khaitan’s Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari is a remake of a remake of a hundred other remakes. And no, it’s not a spoiler to say Sunny will end up with Tulsi. So how do you sell it? Shoot a string of glossy music videos and hope nobody notices the lack of effort.
Back in 2000, the album Piya Basanti showed us how songs could tell a story. Pradeep Sarkar built a lovely little tale around the iconic song, ending on a cliffhanger, only to follow it up with Surmayi Aankhen. That was storytelling. Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari, meanwhile, piles up seven or eight tracks where the happy ones are interchangeable, and so are the sad ones. But how about having a narrative? Nobody has a clue.
And those names! Janhvi Kapoor has gone from Sundari in August to Tulsi in October. I was half-expecting a revelation that her dad was a Tulsi Virani fan, but the film takes its choice of name for the Gen Z girl seriously. Meanwhile, Sunny gets his name because his family owns a jewellery store called Sanskari. If this is Bollywood’s idea of small-town India, they clearly haven’t seen Instagram reels from Ujjain or Ghazipur, where youngsters named Shanaya and Dhruv are already twerking in 4K.
Still, credit where it’s due: I heaved a sigh of relief when Sunny and Tulsi didn’t hate each other before falling in love. For once, no toxic romance. Unlike Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani, this one doesn’t pretend to fix all of India’s social problems. It sticks to arranged-marriage logic, and that’s good enough. When Khaitan made his heroine come from a “broken” family, I braced myself for a Jab We Met redux of “pyaar mein sab chalta hai” theory. Thankfully, that didn’t happen. Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari isn’t a film you watch for inner peace or life lessons. You come for peppy songs, a few laughs, and pretty people.
The prettiest is Tulsi’s ex, Vikram (Rohit Saraf, awkward but makes up with some killer dance moves), who’s about to marry Ananya (Sanya Malhotra, great curls, wrong movie). Their track makes sense in theory, but plays like they were cryogenically frozen in the ’90s and thawed out in 2025. Among the cast, it’s Varun Dhawan who gets the silliness of his role right, and Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari is fun whenever he and Janhvi share the frame. Their best moment comes at the interval in a non-sexual bed-sharing scene that actually brims with chemistry.
There’s some humour, a bit of it butchered by the CBFC. Maniesh Paul shows up as a wedding planner, giving the film some high energy for low payoff. And don’t get me started on Dharma, once again giving us a jacked-up best friend (Abhinav Sharma) with three buttons open. Why this obsession? These bros are not sidekicks, they’re liabilities. Tulsi’s girl bestie (Dharna Durga), in fact, was a far more interesting character and light-years ahead as an actor. One glimpse or two, and we never see her again.
In the end, what Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari made me ask was: Is this really the best Dharma could cook up in 2025? Cinema has moved on. The same production house gave us Homebound last week. And now this? Not entirely unwatchable, I’d say it is the cinematic equivalent of the expression “meh.” Khaitan’s film gives you nothing you haven’t seen before — the lighting, the props, the costumes — everything comes from the Bollywood Recycle Bin. The leads try, the technicians do their jobs, but there’s no craft, no love, and no passion for the medium. Just a paycheck project masquerading as cinema.
Rating: ★★ 1/2
