Film: Ginny wedss Sunny 2
Director: Prasshant Jha
Actors: Avinash Tiwary, Medha Shankr
Rating: 2 stars

Nothing makes one more hopeful than a good romance. And nothing makes one more hopeless than a bad romance. 

The big screen hardly makes room for romances or romantic comedies these days. So, each one that somehow makes it to the screen feels more precious than ever before. Therefore, every poor result in the space hurts more than ever before. It pains even more when it’s the case of missed potential. 

Ginny Wedss Sunny 2 invites you with the promise of a fun ride, but ends up delivering so much boredom that even the length of two hours and 14 minutes feel too long to bear. 

Avinash Tiwary is Sunny from Rishikesh, in Uttarakhand, who is hopelessly waiting for a girl to look at him after a false case of harassment turns his life and career as a local wrestler upside down. Ginny is a Delhi girl, which means she is independent, career-driven, opinionated, and blessed with a mother that makes her lemon shots when she comes home drunk. 

A broken engagement, courtesy a misogynist fiance who judges her willingness to indulge in premarital sex, makes Ginny wary of marriage. But even when she decides to give arranged marriage a chance, she finds no suitable match, precisely because of everything mentioned above.

A web of lies gets Ginny and Sunny married, and after several unfunny scenes where every supposed punchline is preceded by a comedic background score, their love story starts. But their first night itself announces the doom of the union. 

For the viewer, however, it’s a doom since the film’s beginning. The bare minimum of a romantic comedy includes lead characters with striking personalities, appealing chemistry, and a mildly stirring soundtrack. Debutant director Prasshant Jha’s film dulls in every department, even though the premise of deceitful marriage had the potential to serve a good time at the movies. 

The screenplay, also written by Jha, is all over the place, and remains confused about its primary conflict. 

What begins as a couple lying to each other, drags for most part of the film, including a ridiculously done first night sequence where lack of consent is treated as a comic trope. Despite the groom having nightmares about it later, the scene becomes a message about woman empowerment in the last 20 minutes. The transition between humour and drama is amateur, with some scenes framed astonishingly awkward. 

In a romantic comedy, the lack of an engaging screenplay can be compensated by the spark between the lead characters. But Ginny and Sunny have to be one sauceless couple, one who don’t have chemistry and you don’t even care for it. 

It is not on Tiwary and Shankr, who do justice to the material at hand. Tiwary, especially, is excellent in romantic scenes, showing yet again that he is one of the few contemporary actors, who know how to get the love-struck gaze right. If anything, the film is a proof that he deserves better. So does the audience.