Ghudchadi Review: The Second-Hand Embarrassment is Real

JioCinema’s romantic-comedy film surrounds a loving father-son duo who run into crossroads with each other when they both fall for different women and neither wants the other to marry them. What will happen to these two men who desperately want to spend the rest of their lives with the person they naturally gravitate towards but are unable to go forward because of their love for one another?

Written by Deepak Kapur Bhardwaj, the movie has a runtime of around 113 minutes.

Ghudchadi Review

Ghudchadi is that movie that you thought you left behind in the 90s. Whenever I watch these rom-coms, I always wonder how old these people are for their parents to be this controlling and for them to be so awkward about going to a club. It’s as if people in these movies are not autonomous human beings and can’t function without the approval of their families for major life decisions. JioCinema’s release is some of that and added to it is a ton of misogyny and castism that makes you super uncomfortable in every scene.

From the moment Veer and Chirag meet Menka and Devika respectively, you know exactly where this movie is going – of course, a father-son duo unwittingly fall in love with a mother-daughter duo and have to make very tough decisions and fight against the judgements of society. And, of course, there’s going to be a happy resolution in the end. However, you are never fully prepared for the amount of horrid characters and dialogues that you will be subjected to and neither for the less-than-stellar chemistry and acting.

The problem isn’t these predictable conflicts of inter-caste marriage and skewered family dynamics, however. It’s how the movie decides to resolve these conflicts in the most cliched way possible, following a known path that is a cringefest, to put it lightly. The dialogues are terrible and the comedy is predictable and grating. There are moments in the movie that are so crass that you feel second-hand embarrassment from being subjected to it.

“Non-veg” comedy can be funny but the way the movie tackles them is so tone-deaf – listening to adults talk like this is just embarrassing. The other comic beats are equally unimpressive, depending more on gimmicks than anything else. Plus, the movie has an odd affinity for turning serious topics into a comedy moment, which doesn’t land in the slightest. As I said, it’s grating and you wonder why Kalyani Devi prattling on about how people from other castes are second-class citizens is considered to be funny.

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Let’s talk about the romance – Veer and Chirag are the love-at-first-sight type of people and fall for Menka and Devika the moment they lay their eyes on them. Veer at least has the excuse of knowing Menka previously but I wonder how either of them jumped on the marriage bandwagon within the first 5 dates, if that. There is hardly any chemistry between Parth Samthaan & Khushalii Kumar, who look uncomfortably out of place. Dutt & Tandon are better but their pairing also doesn’t click. I blame the script here, though, because there is no buildup for either of these romances. You realise early on that the movie wants to rush through these moments in order to get to the dramatic confrontation and the fights.

Aruna Irani, the matriarch of the family, is the natural antagonist of the film, of course, but she is so over-the-top in every frame that it gets a bit laughable after a while. You try to understand her motives but she spews venom when things don’t go her way, making it difficult to like her when things invariably fall into place. I like the topic of the film but it’s the execution that the movie seriously falters on. The way the subject is handled dilutes the impact that it tries to make, creating a disappointing effect and taking away from whatever it was trying to achieve.

For example, the film, like many others, uses an accident as a get-out-of-jail-free card that conveniently moves the plot in a direction that is favourable without actually trying to get to the bottom of the problems that it brings forth. This happens a lot in the film wherein it either deflects from the topic or puts forth some convenient plot point to rush to a resolution, taking away from the viewers’ interests and diluting the impact.

Final Thoughts

Ghudchadi tackles topics that are impactful and important but it seriously falters on the execution. Instead of focusing on the right things, it takes a surface-level approach that is easy, unimpressive and disappointing. In spite of names like Dutt and Tandon, the film doesn’t deliver a gooey romance either and gives us something utterly cringy and forgettable.

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