by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $15.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Karan Soni, Jonathan Groff, Sunita Mani, Harish Patel, Zarna Garg
Intro:
… a thoughtful spin on a handful of different rom-com variations, delivering d’aww-faced cuteness and stank-faced anxiety with equal impact.
Cringe can feel worse than outright hatred. It’s one thing to, let’s say, come out as one who flies under the flag of many colours, and be met with hostility or disbelief or mockery. Emotions that run that hot, while awful, are at least straight-forward. It’s quite another when that same act, that feels like setting foot in an unknown land, is met with acceptance by those who genuinely care about what that act means to that person… but end up trying way too hard to make themselves appear accepting and just making things even more awkward.
A Nice Indian Boy treats this idea as its central jewel.
It’s the story of young doctor Naveen (Karan Soni) meeting Jay (Jonathan Groff), an orphan adopted by an Indian family, falling in love, and then introducing him to Naveen’s parents (Zarna Garg and Harish Patel). But rather than anything strictly to do with Gay acceptance or cultural differences, the bulk of the conflict here is in Naveen’s own head. His social withdrawal, his strained connections with friends and family, and his internalisation of cultural pressures concerning marriage.
Director Roshan Sethi, along with screenwriters Eric Randall and Madhuri Shekar, do a great job of balancing the adorable and warm relationship between Naveen and Jay, and how nails-on-chalkboard uncomfortable the former’s cultural and family life appear. Naveen and Jay bonding over Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, right next to Naveen repeatedly being told “you’re next” at his sister’s wedding, like he’s in line for a ritual sacrifice. It hits a similar vibe to Happiest Season with its depiction of inner turmoil leading to someone in a relationship making… less-than-ideal decisions, let’s say. Thankfully, it also mirrors that film’s effectiveness in making the audience want to see the hero surpass that obstacle so that they can find happiness.
Soni handles his character’s neuroses with terrific skill, and it’s highly gratifying to see Groff’s charm and charisma on full display, after he was so unjustly discarded in the most recent season of Doctor Who.
What is most impressive here, though, is the way that the film works with the (worryingly common) Gay trauma trope. While the results of homophobic actions are part of the overall story, they’re not necessarily part of Naveen’s story. Instead, his journey across the film becomes an examination of how deep the scar tissue runs within the Gay community.
A Nice Indian Boy is a thoughtful spin on a handful of different rom-com variations, delivering d’aww-faced cuteness and stank-faced anxiety with equal impact. Its comments on the relationship expectations within the Indian and Gay communities, along with their overlap, take refreshingly nuanced approaches, as do the beautifully-captured performances throughout (Sunita Mani as Naveen’s sister Arundhati might be the MVP) and Roshan Sethi’s willingness to paint with both muted indie and bright Bollywood colours. It is an act of cultural exchange that, hopefully, can help us all to heal.
