Daadi Ki Shaadi review: Kapil Sharma's outdated family drama is stuck in Baghban-era

Still from Daadi Ki Shaadi

Kapil Sharma plays Tony Kalra, the heir to Delhi's famous Kalra Sweets, which has 17 branches across India. Tony has been down on his luck when it comes to love, but his fortune changes when the matchmaker shows him the photo of his college crush, Kanika Ahuja (Sadia Khateeb). The alliance is swiftly fixed, and they are to get engaged the very next day.

An elated Tony can hardly contain his excitement at getting engaged to the girl of his dreams. Just as Kanika is about to slide the ring on his finger, all hell breaks loose as news arrives that Sadia's grandmother, Vimla Ahuja (Neetu Kapoor), is getting married herself. Aghast, Tony's grandfather lays down an ultimatum: If Vimla gets married, then Tony cannot marry Kanika.

Unable to get in touch with his mother, Jeevan Ahuja (Deepak Dutta) whisks his family off to her house in Shimla. A desperate Tony accompanies them, not wanting his wedding to be jeopardised. They are joined by his younger brother Nag (Jitender Hooda) and estranged sister Sunania (Riddhima Kapoor), with the singular goal to prevent Vimla's wedding.

Vimla is overjoyed at seeing her distant family come home after years, basking in their affection and delighting in attending to them - until she finds out their true motive. Heartbroken that her children care about their reputation and social status over her happiness, she resorts to a series of lies in hopes of mending the rift between all of them. The lies spiral into a whirlwind of havoc, while Tony, Nag and Jeevan scramble to stop the wedding.

While there were some surprises in store for me, Daadi Ki Shaadi was a vindication of a lot of the fears that I'd harboured from before my viewing of it.

The premise isn't hard to swallow, but it's the execution that seems unrealistic. How did Tony and Kanika get engaged within a day without even meeting first? Why is half of Kanika's family missing at the engagement? Why is Kanika forced into this engagement? You'll have a dozen questions within the first half hour, but don't bother because they will never be satisfactorily explained.

While loneliness among the elderly is an affecting theme, its exploration feels surface-level, albeit it overpowers the film. There's little thought given to fleshing out characters, equipping them with backstories and motives. This family is fractured, dysfunctional all right, but there are no buried resentments, no unresolved tensions bursting out to the fore, explaining why the family is the way it is.

The children have simply abandoned their mother, Baghban-esque. And so you can expect the melodrama to be cranked up a notch. That is not to say that Vimla's grief and isolation could not have made for a compelling subject, but the film never had potential right from the beginning, what with its preachy tone. The children are greedy and selfish. The parents are perfect and self-sacrificing.

Riddhima Kapoor has little to do, and appears swift but not too unsuitable for the role. Kapil Sharma is funny when the script demands it, but the film never gives us enough reason to care about Tony and Kanika, so there's little emotional investment in their character arcs and whether they reunite or not.