Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety: A toxic battle of the sexes or just a light-hearted comedy?
Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety, let’s call it SKTKS for short. With SKTKS, Karthik Aaryan, Nushrat Bharucha and Sunny Singh are back again after Pyaar Ka Punchnama 2. Anyways, I don't want to give too much away but I do need to mention one term, bros before hoes. Heard of this before? Well, that's all that this movie is about.
I had the honor of watching this movie last week and to be honest I was absolutely absorbed in the story and thoroughly entertained. And now I'm torn.
So the film is about a boy named Sonu who is, of course, suspicious of women and doesn't really think they have any other purpose in his life other than the obvious. And then there's his BFF Titu, who is this innocent boy who always ends up falling in love with the wrong girls. Now enters Sweety, the new girl that comes into Titu's life when he agrees to have an arranged marriage. When Sonu sees that Titu is invariably falling for this girl, he is convinced that everything Sweety does is just a nice girl act and that she's ' too good to be true'. So it's basically a story about a fight that this guy and girl have over the possession of another man.
Well, that's something definitely different about this film, a man is being objectified (for a change).
Sounds like a lot of fun story right? It definitely was. There are lines in the film which are genuinely funny. The effect is such that you can't help but burst out laughing. Alok Nath was a fun surprise, completely leaving behind his 'Hum Saath Saath Hain' image by playing this alcohol drinking swearing old man. They weren't really able to convince Sweety as this mean girl- the only wrong thing she does in the movie is tell Sonu that she's chalu. But there are so many clever witty lines being thrown at you, that that is an aspect you end up forgiving.
So then why am I torn?
Well, the film is pretty breezy, a laugh here and there, but what you can't escape is the generalization of women that they're always the enemy. In every Luv Ranjan film, the guys just want to get laid, and the girls are these 'chalu' and silly human beings. And the unfortunate part is that you don't realize any of this while watching the film and from the roaring laughter in the theatre, nobody else is either. It's only later when I heard some classmates of mine discussing this film that this revelation came in mind. Some of the boys were going on about how much they had loved the film and how the movie was exact in depicting how girls are. "Girls are like that only, bahut chalu hoti hai". And it's actually disheartening when I realized that this film, which is being loved all across the country, is probably going to have this same effect on most of the boys or men who watch it. Then you realize that not one woman has been shown in the movie that is 'nice and normal'.
So the brainstorming question is, is this film really that great? It's definitely got a killer cast, and its relentless humor is bang on but what about the stereotypes it portrays and the constant woman bashing?
Cinema is a medium that can translate ideas"- David Lynch
And we should be very careful in what it is that we're translating.
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