First things first. What is Priyanka Chopra doing playing a frisky floozie in this film and why are we expected to invest 90 minutes in what looks like a rejected episode of Inside Amy Schumer?
Isn’t It Romantic is just plainly and simply awful. It casts the overweight Rebel Wilson as Natalie who is shown as incurably romantic in her childhood. Mom lectures little Natalie on the impossibility of romantic love in this cynical world. And voila! Beti is transformed into a diehard cynic.
The film turns all romantic notions on their head when Natalie hits her head in a steel pillar a metro station during a mugging session (this is as exciting as the script gets) and waltzes into woozie-land. Alas, the purportedly wonderful walk into wonderland is more bland than grand.
The flimsy anorexic film ends up celebrating rather than spoofing the conventions of the romcom genre. Natalie’s gay neighbour (Brandon Scott Jones) goes all flabby-wristed and hip-twisted, only to tell us at the end that gay men don’t behave that way in real life. Priyanka plays a femme fatale all set to steal away our heroine Natalie’s best friend-and-potential boyfriend Josh (Adama Devine) who doesn’t really seem worth stealing. In what could be described as the most air-headed role of her career Priyanka plays Isabelle. Her job profile is self-described as ‘yoga ambassador’ (whatever that means). But she seems to spend all her time posing preening pouting and seducing Josh.
With a brief role, Priyanka must have a good reason for doing this film. We don’t know what it is. Her role is what Aroona Irani played in Hindi films of the 1970s; there is the comfort of the company for Ms Chopra in Chris Hemsworth whose presence here is even more baffling. He plays a jerk in a towel who has to pretend he finds the hefty heroine attractive.
Perhaps the same rom-com bug that bites Rebel Wilson bit both Chopra and Hemsworth. Isn’t It Romantic is right up there with Priyanka Chopra’s desi classics Suneel Darshan’s Andaz, Dharmesh Darshan’s Aap Ki Khatir and of course her Hollywood debut Baywatch.
