Param Sundari review: Janhvi Kapoor and Sidharth Malhotra’s Punjabified Kerala romance is a spectacular misfire

Dubai: There’s something called the male gaze, but after watching Janhvi Kapoor and Sidharth Malhotra’s romantic comedy Param Sundari, I’m convinced there’s also something called the North Indian gaze when it comes to Kerala. Honestly, you could call it the Punjabification of South Indian culture and folklore. Everything is turned up to neon brightness — North Indians are fairer, extras from the South are darker, shabbier, and farcical. And yes, there’s even a token Kathakali-masked extra. The clichés are painful.

The film centres on Thekkepattu Sundari Damodaram Pillai (Janhvi), but what we get is pure Bollywood fantasy: jasmine flowers tucked into her hair, sexy saris, plunging blouses, and Mohiniyattam moves galore.

Janhvi has already faced online trolling, but after this, your rage may quadruple. Her Malayalam is so massacred, so garbled, it sounds like an alien dialect. As a Malayali, every fibre of my being screamed in protest.

Then comes the sexualisation — and here the director proves to be an equal-opportunity offender. Sidharth’s rippling torso gets a slow-motion workout sequence, while Janhvi’s bare waist does all the heavy lifting in a sari. Both are objectified so relentlessly that even Hollywood Latinas might cower in shame.

Yes, Janhvi serves looks — tight blouses, wet saris, glossy lips — but when she tries to say something as simple as “puttum kadala,” it’s comedy gold for all the wrong reasons. Kerala cosplay with couture styling, minus the accent coach.

The story? Please. It’s exactly what you saw in the trailer. Param, a hunky Punjabi brat, keeps burning through daddy’s money with failed start-ups. His last chance? An app — some Tinder-meets-Bumble nonsense that claims to scientifically match soulmates. Daddy dearest (a game Sanjay Kapoor) demands proof. Enter Sundari — a Malayali girl running a homestay with her precocious younger sister (Inayat Verma, who ironically feels more authentic than the leads). What follows is one long, glossy Kerala tourism commercial.

Janhvi’s comic timing is flat; Sid fares a little better. Chemistry? Zero. They’re too busy admiring their own reflections.

The writing doesn’t help. Cardboard characters rattle off token lines about Kerala’s “great literacy rates” and “progressive women-to-men ratios.” Coconut trees sway in every other frame. There’s even a borrowed line about how loving Param is passion while loving Venu is pedestrian — straight out of Ae Dil Hai Mushkil. When did cinematic plagiarism become cultural celebration?

And then, the pièce de résistance: Sundari climbing coconut trees as a quirky cultural nugget. For the record, my grandmother reminds me this requires serious upper body strength and is hardly every Malayali woman’s pastime.

Even the Malayalam actors are wasted — reduced to hamming it up. Sundari’s cousin-friend Venu, cast with the menace of a soft pillow, is no threat to Sid’s character. Ironically, he’s the only remotely grounded presence in this circus.

By the time Sidharth’s Punjabi protein-shake lad suddenly masters Vallam Kali rowing, sprinkles in Kalaripayattu moves, and belts out an SRK hit while “teaching” Malayalis their own sport, you know Bollywood logic has officially jumped the boat.

Sure, the song Pardesiya is beautifully picturised, but that’s about it. What I didn’t sign up for was a psychedelic Kerala postcard masquerading as a love story.

Verdict: Param Sundari is less romance and more cultural caricature. Pretty faces, no soul.