Daadi Ki Shaadi Review: Outdated Family Entertainer

Daadi Ki Shaadi offers an outdated plot that fails to deliver on humour or emotional depth, rues Sreeju Sudhakaran.

There are films that make you relive cinema of the past in a warm, nostalgic manner through their callbacks, setting and visual palette. And then there are films that make you relive cinema of yore because they are themselves outdated in their plots.

Any guesses where Daadi Ki Shaadi belongs?

What’s Daadi Ki Shaadi About?

Directed by Ashish R Mohan, Daadi Ki Shaadi begins with the Kalra family facing a crisis of utmost urgency: Getting Tony (Kapil Sharma) married. They receive a proposal from the Ahuja family, but the girl, Kannu (Sadia Khateeb), has one condition. The engagement can happen immediately, but the wedding will take place only after two years.

If either that condition, or the fact that both families are ready to proceed without properly meeting each other, does not strike you as a glaring red flag, perhaps it is time to get your colour blindness checked.

Anyway, just before the rings are exchanged, news breaks out that Kannu’s paternal grandmother Vimla (Neetu Singh) has announced on social media that she is married. The engagement is immediately called off, and the entire family rushes to Shimla where Vimla stays to figure out what exactly happened.

A desperate Tony tags along too, hoping there is still a chance to salvage his prospective marriage.

So, is Vimla actually married?

Well, no.

The misunderstanding behind that social media post is so absurdly silly that it might make you smack your forehead like that famous meme from The Naked Gun.

Yet, Vimla chooses to continue the lie because it finally gives her an excuse to spend time with her otherwise distant family. Assisting her in this emotional charade is Theeran Devrajan (R Sarathkumar), a retired colonel with far too much free time and an unhealthy enthusiasm for meddling in other people’s family matters.

Forced Humour, Exhausting Melodrama

In its initial stretches, Daadi Ki Shaadi comes across as mostly harmless. It clearly wants to be funny, the cast desperately wants it to be funny, and Kapil Sharma, to his credit, tries hard to make every line sound like a punchline.

Yet, the humour keeps landing with a dull thud.

One thing keeps you invested initially: The earnestness in Vimla’s desire to hold her family together for a little while longer.

The problem lies in how the film goes about it. With Devrajan’s help, she begins emotionally manipulating her selfish (and weakly written) children into becoming more caring and attentive, a formula that has already been exhausted by countless family dramas over the decades.

Just imagine Bawarchi or Hero No 1 stripped of the former’s warmth and the latter’s boisterous charm.

Even in that space, Daadi Ki Shaadi brings nothing new to the wedding table. You can predict every item on the menu well in advance, and then awkwardly congratulate yourself each time another stale dish (plot drama) arrives exactly as expected.

Daadi Ki Shaadi also does not know when to end a scene. It catches hold of a dramatic or comic moment and drags it on awkwardly, as though the director couldn’t figure out where to yell ‘Cut’.

It does not matter whether the scene is dramatic, like the dinner-table argument over who spends the most money on their mother, or comedic, like the chaotic bus sequence in the climax involving Tony’s grandfather (Yograj Singh Khalsa).

The end result is one of the two: Either the scene tests your patience, or it leaves you sharing the embarrassment of watching an overstretched joke collapse miserably in front of you.

Riddhima Kapoor Sahni’s Average Debut

Even the Riddhima Kapoor Sahni’s much-hyped acting debut barely leaves an impression. She receives a bizarre signature background theme and a swagger-filled introduction scene, although what truly distracts you is the excessive AI-style facial smoothing in the visuals.

Her performance is decent enough, but the screenplay gives her little to do beyond becoming yet another ‘ungrateful’ family member in a film already overloaded with them.

Vimla’s two sons (played by Deepak Dutt and Jitender Hooda) and their wives (portrayed by Tejaswini Kolhapure and Aditi Mittal), all contribute to the same exhausting family dynamic. Even their conflicts feel manufactured. Why, for instance, would one sibling not inform the others or their mother about their daughter’s engagement?

The film exists in the age of smartphones, yet none of its characters appear smart enough to use one sensibly.

The Regressive Romantic Track

The biggest irritation, however, is the supposed romantic track between Tony and Kannu. Tony claims they attended the same college, though I am unsure how many colleges keep their medical (Kannu) and arts (Tony) departments close enough for that setup to work organically.

Even if you ignore that, what is impossible to ignore is the casting.

No matter how stylishly Kapil Sharma is dressed, he still looks far too old opposite a chirpy Sadia Khateeb’s distinctly Gen Z persona. And much like the rest of the narrative, the film adopts a painfully outdated approach towards their romance.

Kannu is clearly uninterested in Tony, yet the film expects us to root for him persistently pursuing her. She dreams of working and settling abroad, though it becomes increasingly obvious where the film intends to take her arc for its ‘happy ending’.

This is a film that glorifies joint families, guilts children for being too consumed by their own problems, and therefore unsubtly treats a woman’s ambitions as secondary unless they culminate in marriage to a man who looks old enough to be her uncle.

Then again, wearing a reluctant woman down until she falls for the hero was also a major plot point in Ashish R Mohan’s debut film Khiladi 786, so I suppose one can at least admire the consistency.

Like the screenplay, the film’s visual presentation is equally scattered. The colour grading fluctuates wildly from scene to scene, making the whole film resemble something rushed through AI processing without anyone bothering to ensure visual consistency.

There is a flashback scene that feels suspiciously created using AI (again) and the same scene is used again near the end during a melodramatic song sequence. When you made it once, why not flaunt it again?

In the end, you mostly feel sorry for Neetu Singh, who remains Daadi Ki Shaadi‘s lone genuinely endearing presence, and for R Sarathkumar, trying hard to navigate the pauses in his dialogue delivery while maintaining stoic dignity.

And then you feel sorry for the rest of the capable cast too, trapped in storytelling ideas and emotional beats that should have been retired at least two decades ago.

Daadi Ki Shaadi Review Rediff Rating: