Akshay Oberoi Archives

October 12, 2025

by Carla Hay

Janhvi Kapoor, Varun Dhawan, Rohit Saraf and Sanya Malhotra in “Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari” (Photo courtesy of Dharma Productions)

Directed by Shashank Khaitan

Hindi with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in India, the comedy film “Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari” features a predominantly Asian cast of characters (with a few white people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A man and a woman join forces to stop the wedding of their ex-lovers who dumped them, so that the schemers can possibly reunite with these ex-lovers.

Culture Audience: “Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and silly romantic comedies.

Janhvi Kapoor and Varun Dhawan in “Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari” (Photo courtesy of Dharma Productions)

“Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari” has a lot of flash but hardly any originality. It’s a romantic comedy misfire that is too outdated and dull to justify its 135-minute runtime. This badly acted story (about a man and a woman who pathetically conspire to stop the wedding of their respective ex-lovers) is one irritation after another. If that plot sounds familiar, it’s because it’s almost identical to the 1997 romantic comedy “Addicted to Love,” directed by Griffin Dunne and starring Meg Ryan, Matthew Broderick, Kelly Preston and Tchéky Karyo.

Directed by Shashank Khaitan, “Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari” takes place in an unnamed city in India. Khaitan co-wrote the movie’s awful screenplay with Ishita Moitra. In the beginning of the movie, “regular guy” Sunny Sanskari (played by Varun Dhawan) proposes marriage to his high-maintenance girlfriend Ananya Bhatia (played by Sanya Malhotra), but she says no. That’s because she’s gotten engaged to arrogant Vikram Singh (played by Rohit Saraf), who comes from a billionaire family. Ananya’s father Pulkit Bhatia (played by Gaurav Sikri) and Ananya’s mother Kriti Bhatia (played by Nazneen Madan) are thrilled about this arranged marriage because Ananya will be marrying into a very wealthy family.

Meanwhile, “nice girl” Tulsi Kumari (played by Janhvi Kapoor) was Vikram’s girlfriend of 12 years, but Vikram abruptly dumps Tulsi and tells her that he’s marrying someone else. Vikram’s mother (played by Manini Chadha) never really accepted Tulsi because Tulsi is from a lower caste and because Tulsi’s parents are divorced. Tulsi’s mother abandoned the family when Tulsi was 13. Tulsi still has emotional scars from this abandonment.

Sunny and Tulsi end up meeting, they find out they their ex-lovers are marrying each other, and Sunny convinces Tulsi that they should team up to stop the wedding. As part of the plan, Sunny and Tulsi pretend that they are in a hot and heavy romance to try to make Vikram and Ananya jealous. Sunny and Tulsi foolishly think that this jealousy will make Ananya want to reunite with Sunny, and Vikram to get back together with Tulsi.

Tulsi and Sunny show up unannounced as a “couple” at the wedding rehearsals and pretend that they are happy that Vikram and Ananya are getting married. Somehow, Tulsi and Sunny convince Vikram and Ananya to let them be at the wedding too. It’s all so unbelievable and cringeworthy to watch.

Also along for this farce is Sunny’s best friend Kuku (played by Maniesh Paul), who is slightly less annoying than Sunny. Tulsi’s best friend Dharna (played by Dharna Durga) is skeptical about this scam, but she gets involved in these stupid shenanigans anyway. Sunny’s father Suresh Sanskari (played by Rohitashv Gour) and Sunny’s mother Geeta Sanskari (played by Kavita Pais) also make appearances.

There’s also a boring and unnecessary subplot about Vikram’s older brother Param Singh (played by Akshay Oberoi) having marital problems because Param is very controlling and forbids his wife Rakhi Singh (played by Manini Chadha), who’s an aspiring fashion designer, from going to Paris to do an internship with a famous fashion designer. Rakhi was chosen for this internship, but Param doesn’t seem to want her to have any career. Param and his mother also insult and degrade Tulsi to try to make her feel unworthy of Vikram.

This is the type of movie that has a scene where Tulsi and Ananya end up in the same bathroom during the wedding rehearsals, and they compete in front of a mirror to see who looks thinner by sucking in their stomachs. This scene is followed by a scene of Sunny and Vikram ending up in the same bathroom during rehearsals. Sunny and Vikram are both standing side by side at urinals, and they sideways glance at each other’s penises to see which one is bigger. (There’s no nudity in the movie.)

It should come as no surprise that Sunny and Tulsi become emotionally closer and become attracted to each other during their moronic scheme to stop the wedding. In other words, before the movie is even halfway over, you know how it’s going to end. The movie’s elaborate song-and-dance numbers have forgettable songs and are just style over substance. “Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari” has a lot of people running around acting ridiculous, people getting into shouting matches, and a continous barrage of idiocy. By the end of the movie, it’s not heartwarming but headache-inducing.

Dharma Productions released “Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari” in select U.S. cinemas and in India on October 2, 2025.

January 26, 2024

by Carla Hay

Deepika Padukone, Hrithik Roshan and Karan Singh Grover in “Fighter” (Photo courtesy of Viacom18 Studios)

“Fighter” (2024)

Directed by Siddharth Anand

Hindi with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in India and in Pakistan, the action film “Fighter” features an Indian and Pakistani cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: Fighter pilots in the Indian Air Force battle against Pakistani terrorists led by a ruthless sadist.

Culture Audience: “Fighter” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of simple-minded and lengthy action movies that overload on jingoistic messages.

Rishabh Sawhney in “Fighter” (Photo courtesy of Viacom18 Studios)

“Fighter” has plenty of energetic action and musical numbers. There’s equal-opportunity eye candy. But it’s also awfully predictable and aggressively jingoistic. It looks like wartime propaganda and a very long recruitment ad for the Indian Air Force.

Directed by Siddharth Anand and written by Ramon Chibb, “Fighter” (which takes place in India and in Pakistan) rips off some elements of 2022’s “Top Gun: Maverick” and injects the movie with the cinematic version of steroids. “Fighter” knows that many of its action scenes are unrealistic. It knows that the way the hero zips in and out (and back again) of his military job completely misrepresents the real procedures in military protocol. That’s not the main problem with “Fighter.”

The main problem is that for a movie that is 166 minutes long, there is no real suspense. It’s just a series of high-octane fight scenes (the best part of the movie) with a predictable romance and a very sloppy subplot of the movie’s “hero” having career problems. After a while, it all becomes so formulaic and corny.

The jingoism in the movie also borders on xenophobia against Pakistan. The terrorists in “Fighter” happen to be from Pakistan, but there are parts of the film that make it look like Pakistan is to blame overall for much of the mayhem that ensues in the story. In the movie, all the Pakistani people with significant speaking roles are terrorists, which is a terrible and offensive stereotype.

The “hero” of the story is Shamsher “Patty” Pathania (played by Hrithik Roshan ), the squadron leader of his Indian Air Force team of fighter pilots. Patty (just like Tom Cruise’s Pete “Maverick” Mitchell character in the “Top Gun” movies) is a charming and handsome daredevil who often defies orders, which sometimes gets him into trouble and often frustrates and annoys his commanding officer. Patty reports to Rakesh “Rocky” Jai Sing (played by Anil Kapoor), a no-nonsense group captain who frequently reprimands Patty when Patty gets out of line and does something careless while on duty.

Patty’s obvious love interest is Minal “Minni” Rathore (played by Deepika Padukone), who is on the same fighter pilot team. Minni is strong and independent. Every time Patty tries to impress her, she acts like she doesn’t care. She doesn’t play hard to get with Patty because she actually is hard to get. Because “Fighter” is a completely predictable film, you can almost do a countdown to the parts of the movie were Patty and Minni have verbal disagreements when Minni tries to pretend that she’s not attracted to him, and then things happen that change her attitude toward him.

Minni has an emotional barrier around herself because she has a vulnerability that she doesn’t like to talk about: She is estranged from her parents Abhijeet Rathore (played by Ashutosh Rana) and Usha Rathore (played by Geeta Agrawal), because her airline executive father vehemently disapproves of her being in the Air Force as a pilot. Abhijeet thinks that women shouldn’t be in military combat, and he expects Minni to be a traditional wife and mother.

And it wouldn’t be typical action hero movie if the hero didn’t have some emotional pain too, usually because of a death of a loved one. In Patty’s case, he had a fiancée named Naina, nicknamed NJ (played by Seerat Mast, shown in flashbacks), who was a flight lieutenant in the Air Force. She died in a helicopter crash because of a decision that Patty made. Patty has been living with the guilt ever since. NJ’s relationship with one of Patty’s colleagues is revealed later in the movie. This revelation isn’t a complete surprise.

The other people on this Air Force team are squadron leader Sartaj “Taj” Gill (played by Karan Singh Grover), squadron leader Basheer “Bash” Khan (played by Akshay Oberoi), squadron leader Sukhdeep “Sukhi” Singh (played by Baveen Singh), Rajan “Unni” Unninathan (played by Mahesh Shetty), flying officer Manoj “Birdie” Bhardwaj (played by Nishan Khanduja) and wing commander Harish “Nauty” Nautiyal (played by Chandan K Anand). Along with Patty and Minni, they are all tight-knit and spend a lot of their free time with each other.

Unfortunately, everyone on the squad except Patty and Minni are utterly generic characters. It’s one of biggest failings of “Fighter,” which is trying desperately to be India’s version of “Top Gun: Maverick.” At least in the “Top Gun” movies, there are at least four fighter pilots who have personalities that viewers can tell apart from each other. That’s not the case with “Fighter.”

Meanwhile, the chief terrorist is Azhar Akhtar (played by Rishabh Sawhney), a muscular brute who does what terrorists do in movies like “Fighter.” When he’s not killing people with bombs, guns or other weapons, hate-filled Azhar snarls, stomps around, and yells at people. His personality is just a soulless void, as he says nothing that is memorable in “Fighter.”

How do you know that “Fighter” wants to be like the “Top Gun” movies, besides the airplane stunt scenes? Patty spends some of his time courting Minni by giving her rides on his motorcycle, just like Tom Cruise’s Maverick character does with his love interest in the “Top Gun” movies. Something happens to Patty as “punishment” for being reckless, and this plot development is straight out of “Top Gun: Maverick.”

To its credit, “Fighter” delivers some variety for people who don’t want to see fight scenes all of the time in an action movie. There’s some emotional drama, some romance, and the obligatory scenes of scantily clad Patty and Minni as they frolic on a beach or cavort in large groups during the movie’s song-and-dance numbers. The acting isn’t horrible, but neither is it great.

“Fighter” is sure to be a crowd-pleaser for many people in the movie’s intended audience. The movie obviously had a large budget for visual effects, some of which look dazzling and realistic, while some of the other visual effects look ridiculously fake. However well-intentioned the movie is in portraying Indian patriotism, it shouldn’t have to be at the expense of making another country look like the enemy when the two countries are not at war with each other in this story. “Fighter” just took the lazy way in telling this story, which comes across as a big-budget, derivative video game.

Viacom18 Studios released “Fighter” in U.S. cinemas and in India on January 25, 2024.

Tag: Akshay Oberoi

Review: ‘Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari,’ starring Varun Dhawan, Janhvi Kapoor, Sanya Malhotra and Rohit Saraf

Review: ‘Fighter’ (2024), starring Hrithik Roshan, Deepika Padukone and Anil Kapoor