A Nice Boy movie review: Warmly acted and wonderfully nuanced

Karan Soni is Naveen Gavaskar, a doctor in an unnamed American city, who runs into Jay Kurundkar (Jonathan Groff) at the local Lord Ganesha temple. It’s love at first sideways glance, but also love at the first gong of the temple bell, and they are quickly thrown together again.

In a delicious twist, Jay is a White orphan who, after moving from one foster home to another, finally found “parents” in an Indian family, the Kurundkars. They have died since, but not before passing onto Jay their love of Bollywood, knowledge of Indian food, possessiveness about “costly” saffron, and the need to touch the feet of the elderly.

Again, this is not unfamiliar ground, with Naveen the one with a family who doesn’t feel himself at home, and Jay the one without a family who is looking for home. It is how director Roshan Sethi (also Soni’s real-life spouse) and writers Eric Randall (Bones) and Madhuri Shekar (Three Body Problem) negotiate this space is what makes A Nice Boy special.

There is a clashing and meeting of cultures, generations, races and genders here that blurs and embraces lines. Zarna Garg and Harish Patel (the stand-up comic Garg especially), as Naveen’s mother and father, stand in for all parents – with or without gay children, with or without being based in America – who always live in the fear of not being enough. And, often, when you least expect it, are.

At various points in A Nice Boy, the Gavarskars are at pains to explain that they are “very liberal” indeed, unlike most Indian parents – especially at their first meeting with Jay as Naveen’s fiance.

Sunitha Mani plays Naveen’s elder sister Arundhathi, who feels the weight of traditional expectations on her, especially with Naveen freed of them. Her resentment towards Naveen as well as the deep affection between the siblings, who inhabit a world of their own between the world of their Indian parents and the world of their American peers, is evident in a beautiful scene they share over a cup of tea.

Among other things, they talk of DDLJ, recognising it as corny, but also essential to who they are. Same as how the Indian wedding is for an Indian’s wedding.

At the same time, even SRK’s Raj wasn’t such A Nice Boy as the perfect Jay (Mindhunter) is, handsome, kind, emotional, and always, always accommodative towards Naveen. A more complicated Jay, who talks at one point about not needing “another family that rejects me”, would have made A Nice Boy much nicer.

Still, at the end of the day, as Arundhathi tells Naveen, “I don’t hold anything against a guy who took you to DDLJ on your first date.”

Who can?

A Nice Boy movie director: Roshan Sethi
A Nice Boy movie cast: Karan Soni, Jonathan Groff, Zarna Garg, Sunita Mani, Harish Patel
A Nice Boy movie rating: 3.5 stars