Meet Cute is a drama anthology series written and directed by Deepthi Ghanta and produced by Nani and Prashanti Tipirneni. The series stars Ashwin Kumar, Varsha Bollamma, Ruhani Sharma, Raaja Chembolu, Aakanskha Singh, Surekha Vani, Adah Sharma, Shiva Kandukuri, Sunainaa, Sanchitha Poonacha and Govind Padmasoorya, alongside other cast members.
The series has 5 episodes, each with a runtime of around 30 minutes.
SonyLIV describes the series as:
Prepare yourself to watch the trailer of adorable urban love stories produced by Prashanti Tipirneni and directed by Deepthi Ghanta.
– Meet Cute Review Does Not Contain Spoilers –
It’s weird how whenever you watch anthologies, the episodes will be a mix of good and not-so-good episodes. Weirdly still, Meet Cute is a mixture of average shows that leave much to be desired. It’s a feel-good show, one that you can watch without many thoughts and find yourself smiling sometimes. But apart from that, Meet Cute doesn’t create any sort of an impact, nor does it dig deep into some of the issues that it introduces.
In most of the episodes, people don’t have much of a boundary. This, to be fair, can be seen in the everyday lives of most Indians, but let’s not discount the fact that the phenomenon is pretty toxic. I can’t imagine stalking my son’s girlfriend and manipulating them to tell me all of their life stories instead of just asking the son in question, but as long as the ending is sweet, I guess the blatant boundary violation is ok, right?
The episodes of the series are filled with such moments that will keep you in limbo – should we feel icky about this dubious situation or just push these thoughts to the back of our minds and let the rush of cuteness wash over our rather bland lives? The jury’s out on that question, and thus, you are left feeling confused and don’t quite get the feeling that the series tries to provide for you.
On top of that, Meet Cute feels like different stories are put into a similar framework. The beauty of anthologies, at least for me, is the variety of stories that we get to see, which have not only different plots but also follow different ways of showcasing those stories. Weirdly enough, the series feels like the same thing told in the same way, with only the relationships changing names and faces. Most of the time, the anthology series feels repetitive, which is sad, considering we all sometimes need a nice dose of love and warmth.
That being said, I really did enjoy the different types of meet-cutes in the show. You’d expect it all to be romantic meetings between future partners and how that will make you think back to your first love and all that. However, Meet Cute has a different flavour in that respect in every episode. It’s a celebration of people meeting each other in the most unexpected ways and learning things from those experiences.
For the most part, however, Meet Cute feels like a rehashed version of different stuff we have watched previously, and the ending of every episode seems awfully convenient as things get wrapped in a nice little bow, even though the stories will leave you asking for more. Since the characters are all sorta icky, you don’t always desire happy endings, but thanks to the nature of the show, there’s not much choice you have on the matter.
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It’s such an odd conundrum to face!
However, I thoroughly enjoy the songs in the anthology, and they will make you feel warm and fuzzy!
Getting a little bit into spoilers – I think the series goes right off the deep end in the last episode. Although the first 4 episodes had issues of their own, I simply did not understand the point of introducing a supernatural twist in the last episode. I not only thought that it was unnecessary, but it was also absolutely forced.
If two people are having issues in their relationship, a dead ex is not the answer to solve those issues. If anything, couples counselling is a better answer! That last episode left a bitter taste in my mouth – I would’ve understood if the series was a drama-horror or something of the sort. But if you want me to believe that the moment I have an issue in my romantic relationship, a dead relative is going to spring into action, it just sounds ludicrous.
Watching it was equally bad.
Summing Up: Meet Cute
Meet Cute is a short anthology series that doesn’t try too hard to be anything more than average. It has 5 stories that have happy endings, but for those asking for more from your romantic comedies and reading between the lines, the undertones can be difficult to digest, more so when some of the characters do some very iffy things in order to be humorous and funny.
I mean, it can’t be that bad if their hearts were in the right place, right?
Meet Cute is streaming on SonyLIV.
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