Kartik Aaryan’s career-changing romcom Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety(SKTKS) which completes four years since its release on on 23 February in 2018, is getting ready for a sequel.
Yes the controversial film about the over-possessive bestfriend Sonu(Kartik) who plots and plans and finally breaks up his friend Titu(Sunny Singh’s) proposed marriage with Sweet(Nushrat Nushrratt Bharuccha) is likely to have a sequel.
Everyone wants to know what happened to the wrecked-angular relationship after Sonu got rid if Tutu’s fiancée.
The 2018 films was glib-tongued game-changer. There is something to be said in favour of the spoken word in the movies, or the dialogue as its known.When sharply written, these words can embrace the characters in layers of unvarnished molten gold.Sure enough the repartees in Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety(SKTKS) just roll off the characters’ tongues making them sound sassy and sombre even when they are being mean and vicious just because it suits the script’s purposes.And God knows, this film needs no excuse to let the words flow.So full marks to co-writer Rahul Mody and Luv Ranjan for investing the vivacious proceedings with a verbal gusto that I found to be more sparkling in wit and insinuations than the dialogues in any recent film.
SKTKS is the story of the eponymous Titu(Sunny Singh, suitably equanimous) who is a bit of a rich spoilt dullard mithaiwala’s son who falls in love with every human being in a skirt, the shorter the better. It takes Titu’s BFF Sonu(Kartik Aryan) to rescue Titu from his disastrous relationship crises time after time.At one point in the slyly silken storytelling Kartik’s Sonu tells the manipulative gold digger a story of what he did to a boy in the classroom as a child when that boy troubled Titu.
Clearly this a bromance of extraordinary intensity and Kartik and Sunny Singh ,specially Kartik, plays the brothers-born-from-different-mothers with a ferocious fidelity never allowing gay insinuations colour their camaraderie.Luv Ranjan is very clear in his reading of ‘bromantic’ relationships. The woman is often a gold-digging manipulative scheming bitch.Nushrat Bharucha plays the part with relish. It’s her ongoing game of oneupmanship with Kartik Aryan’s Sonu that gives a thundering heft to the plot, lifting even the sagging episodes(like the pre-marriage bachelor party in Amsterdam which stretches into a blingy binge) to a zestful place filled with attractive sounds and seductive images of from privileged homes where no one has to bother about anything except the next holiday abroad.
Luv Ranjan is terrific at shooting family dynamics during festive times. The wedding-time negotiations , backbiting and meal/alcohol consumption occupy a major part of narrative. There is a kind of compelling clarity to the way Ranjan pins down the inner workings of relationships in joint families about to come together through a marital alliance.
Of course it helps that character actors from Alok Nath(abandoning his bovine image to play a wickedly irreverent grandfather) to Pritam Jaiswal(as an annoyingly efficient house help who is manipulated out of the household) add character to every scene they occupy. Indeed this is not so much a triangle as a wreck-tangle with every supporting actor egging on the central conflict among a two men who just can’t stop loving one another and a woman , who will tear them apart at any cost.
Nushrat Bharucha’s deftly enacted Sweety admits at one point she is not the heroine but the villain. So does she get her hero or does she get her comeuppance? The answer my friend, is blowing in the wink.Tongue lodged firmly in cheek, Luv Ranjan’s bromance-versus-romance tale has enough bite to make it one of the most invigorating rom-coms in recent times.
After this oddball blockbuster changed Kartik Aaryan’s fortunes he had said to me, “Every actor dreams for this day and finally, for me it’s here. I enjoy going to theatres to see the audience reaction. I feel happy when they shout out my name. I’m enjoying the kind of love and adulation I’m getting from everyone and especially from girls haha . My Insta, Twitter and FB inbox is filled with marriage and dating proposals. I love reading them all.I started really young and was youngest actor to debut as a lead in a movie and before entering the industry a senior person had told me once that generally, it takes 7 to 8 years to make your identity in this city, Mumbai. It may sound a long span of time but trust me you won’t even realise and it will go like this. But I feel you need to go through your own journey of struggle. It’s important, it’s necessary. It teaches you a lot about life. It makes you to value things in life. I used to travel from Navi Mumbai to Andheri for auditions via local train everyday. I used to get ready in railway stations’ washroom. But I had no option. I didn’t know anyone in the city. But today I feel happy and proud when I look back at those days.”
So why did Kartik’s Sonu go all-out to destroy his bestfriend’s marriage plans? Is there an undercurrent of homosexuality here? “I wouldn’t say Sonu destroyed his friend’s marriage. I’d say he protected his best friend from a gold digger.And yes, I’d do the same if push comes to shove. I don’t fear being judged as a misogynist.Because that’s my character Sonu they are judging, not me, Thankfully the audience is flocking to see the film without getting judgmental about the gender equations in the film.
About his special bonding with Luv Ranjan Kartik says, “I’d do it as many times as Luv Ranjan wants me to. Luv Sir stood by me through all these years. It takes a lot of guts to stand by someone you believe in when that someone is not a big star.He very clearly told producers it’s me and Nushrat Bharucha and no one else. I wonder where I’d have been in this lonely city without someone to believe in my talent.Not that I would have ever given up. I believed in myself. You have to believe in yourself only then can you expect others to believe in you.”
Luv Ranjan who recently got married has only warm thoughts for Kartik. “People have tried to spoil our rapport. They tell me has changed with success. But I see the same Kartik now as he was when I first signed him for Pyaar Ka Punchama after finding him on Facebook. Yes, we will work together again very soon.”