When Abhishek Kapoor’s Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui (2021) got here out final yr, it felt as if the small-town social dramedy and its champion Ayushmann Khurrana had reached peak fatigue. There was a set template for the story, which was all the time set in a tier-two metropolis, concerned a household with eccentric characters, and had a plot that adopted the identical sample whereas treating the viewers like faculty youngsters in want of instruction. All that modified have been the social concern being tackled by the movie and Khurrana’s coiffure. Since his debut within the winsome Vicky Donor (2012), which touched upon problems with fertility and sperm donors, Khurrana has completed one thing few actors have managed: Birthed his personal style. There are different actors like Rajkummar Rao (Stree), Kartik Aaryan (Luka Chuppi), Sanya Malhotra (Pagglait) and Kriti Sanon (Mimi) who’ve discovered success with the small-town social dramedy, however nobody has completed it fairly like Khurrana. Since 2015, virtually each movie of Khurrana has seen him enjoying a hero by means of whom the viewers might be educated.
Nonetheless, Khurrana’s and Rao’s latest releases counsel the audiences have uninterested in this components, which initially appeared like a crowd favorite. The milieu of Bhopal, Lucknow, hinterland Rajasthan, Gujarat, Bihar have change into reflections of each other. Actors like Seema Pahwa, Gajraj Rao, Brijendra Kala and Sheeba Chadha have by now performed umpteen iterations of the annoying members of the hero’s prolonged household. The ‘quirky’ humour has a sameness to it, and the screenwriting has change into more and more pedantic. Because of this, this explicit model of social dramedy feels unbearable and it could have hampered the industrial possibilities of extra perceptive movies from the style, like Harshvardhan Kulkarni’s Badhaai Do and Anubhuti Kashyap’s Physician G.
Each movies, regardless of glowing critiques, haven’t drawn audiences regardless of being charming, sharply observant and heartbreaking in a great way. Badhaai Do author Akshat Ghildial chafed on the concept of categorising movies set in small cities as a separate style. “Even Andhadhun (2018) needs to be referred to as a ‘small city’ movie as a result of it’s set in Pune,” mentioned Ghildial, “however the characters are barely extra city, English-speaking, so we gained’t name it that.” He identified what number of Nineties’ films have been set in cities or villages in Punjab, however weren’t subjected to this kind of cinematic geotagging. Ghildial mentioned Badhaai Ho (2018) wasn’t a ‘small city’ movie per se, since a lot of it passed off in Delhi. “However as a result of the movie is ready round a household, whose ethos is small city, folks are likely to membership it beneath that style,” he mentioned.
