Ginny Wedss Sunny 2 Review:
In the 90s, post liberalisation, Hindi cinema was all about romantic films. Production houses like Yash Raj and Dharma painted a dreamlike canvas of love with chiffon sarees swaying amidst snowy, picturesque, foreign locations. Now, with the rise of violent, macho actioners on the big screen there have been discussions about how Hindi cinema has lost its feel-good core, the quirky comedy, the family entertainer. At this moment, comes Ginny Wedss Sunny 2, a debris of the Ayushmann Khurrana-brand small-town romantic-comedy, which attempts to fill this empty space but only manages to cement the fact that it is never the genre but only the storytelling that should be blamed.
Cast: Avinash Tiwary, Medha Shankr, Sudhir Pandey, Lilette Dubey and Rohit Chaudhary
Written and directed by: Prasshant Jha
Rating: 1.5 stars
A small-town boy, a big-city girl, love, lies, marriage, jokes, misunderstandings, wooing-back, lessons on feminism and reunion, GWS 2 seems like a prompt-generated film. The boy is Shivaansh aka Sunny (Avinash Tiwary) from Rishikesh who wanted to be a National-level wrestler but a viral video shattered his dreams. Now, he runs a shop and trades jibes with his father and brother over his dry marriage prospects. Parallelly there is Ginny (12th Fail fame Medha Shankr), a Delhi girl, whose modernity and open-mindedness can only be portrayed by showing her dancing and taking shots in a club. She is also facing rejections from suitors. Ultimately, when Ginny and Sunny meet in an arranged-marriage setting they decide to lie to each other. He shows himself as a well-educated entrepreneur while she decides to act as the quintessential, well-mannered and wholesome wife.
GWS 2 might be having an unimaginative premise but its treatment is way more straightforward and predictable. The boredom sets in soon. The humour is corny, sexist and is accompanied by such animated background jingles it seems like we are watching the Kapil Sharma Show. To give you an example, if a character says something that proves his point, the jingle will go “that’s right”, a sexual innuendo will be accompanied by “oh yeah” and if a train is mentioned brace yourself to listen to its blaring horn in the background. In such juvenile ways, there is an attempt to show that the film is light-hearted and fun. GWS 2 marks all the cliché boxes of a romantic-drama. Boy meets girl and there is a love song, they get married and you get a party song, misunderstandings arise and there is a sad song. Every emotion is artificial and assembled.
The biggest issue with GWS 2 is that it is not offering anything new. It often feels like a stock reel for a small-town rom-com with visuals of a Ganga ghat, and of youngsters drinking on the terrace while hiding from their father (the dad joins them eventually). Avinash’s Sunny has an elder brother who is jealous of him and a blabbermouth bhabhi who makes reels on social media. He also has a generic best friend (played by Rohit Chaudhary known for similar roles in Bareilly Ki Barfi, 2017 and Jabariya Jodi, 2019) who is actually preparing for UPSC but his real purpose is to add humour to the hero’s journey.
Given the material, Avinash Tiwary gives a serviceable performance. Medha, however, seems a bit ill-at-ease in some scenes. Their pairing only scores on the aesthetic metre but they have no chemistry. The side characters also can’t add any spice to this bland meal. GWS 2 proceeds with no surprises and is such a drawl that I started noticing the t-shirt quotes of Sunny’s IAS-aspirant best friend, one of which reads “LBSNAA, I am coming” (for those who don’t know Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration aka LBSNAA is the training institute for IAS aspirants). In another scene even Avinash’s Sunny is seen wearing a top that reads “Creative stories.” Dress for the job you want, I guess.