Falling in love can be a beautiful experience, but it comes with a few challenging moments – and many will say that one of the most nerve-racking is the process of meeting the parents. While it is usually a pleasant and relatively painless affair in hindsight, the anxiety and fear of trying to impress your prospective spouse’s parents, or making a good impression on the person with whom you hope to spend the rest of your life, is not always easy to navigate, especially for couples who fall outside the confines of the status quo. This is the starting point for Roshan Sethi in A Nice Indian Boy (his adaptation of the play by Madhuri Shekar), in which he tells the story of Naveen, an Indian-American man who seems to have a perfect life – he’s got a good career as a doctor, he’s young and handsome enough to be the most eligible bachelor in town, and he has a range of hobbies that keep him busy. The only problem is that he has yet to find the right partner, and when the perfect candidate does enter his life, everything becomes quite complicated, since not only is his prospective partner a man, he is also not Indian (at least not by birth), which he already knows will cause friction with his very traditional immigrant parents, who claim to be open-minded enough to accept his sexual identity, but cannot abide by his decision to date (and then later marry) someone from outside their culture, even if he possesses a much deeper knowledge of their traditions than one would expect. A very charming romantic comedy that cannot avoid falling victim to the same predictable tropes, but otherwise still being quite delightful in how it handles some slightly trickier subject matter. Sethi, who has already developed a substantial reputation as a reliable filmmaker with a strong body of support from within the independent film industry, crafts a very effective film that doesn’t do anything particularly revolutionary, but still offers us something memorable, even at its most pedestrian and predictable.

As time has progressed and we’ve become a slightly more tolerant culture, we’ve found that stories about couples who exist outside the traditional and supposedly idealistic view of social standards are becoming a bit more common. It isn’t at the point where it can be considered entirely normalised within the industry, but there is a lot more work being done to emphasise diversity where possible. Sethi’s challenge – or rather his opportunity – with A Nice Indian Boy was to take two slightly contentious subjects, fusing them into a single narrative and finding a way to draw inspiration from it in the process. This is both about a same-sex relationship and a mixed-race marriage, both of which should not be contentious points, but which remain somewhat divisive, at least in terms of the perpetual tug-of-war between tradition and modernity, a point that has proven to still be quite relevant, even if it does sometimes come across as far too provocative. Progress is not always about blind acceptance, and some of the most meaningful works are those that are willing to have the difficult conversations. This is very much the case with A Nice Indian Boy, which is not interested in the heavy-handed posturing that comes with promoting the idea of a perfect utopian society, but rather in how it quietly explores culture from several different lenses. The reason this film turns out to be unexpectedly effective is drawn from its willingness to not view either side of the debate as inherent inferior to the other – on one hand, we’ve gone past the point where we should be dividing people based on race or sexual identity, while on the other, culture is something that shouldn’t be outright dismissed, even if some of its practices can be hopelessly outdated. The key is to bring the concepts closer together, rather than eliminating one over the other. This is where this film succeeds, since it finds common ground in its exploration of culture coming into conflict with modern practices, and shows that they do not have to be mutually exclusive, even when they seem to be entirely incompatible.

One of the reasons A Nice Indian Boy never comes across as entirely inauthentic is through its commitment to the material – it never posits itself as being definitive of the queer experience, nor the most thorough examination of culture clash, but rather acknowledges its limitations and chooses to focus on ideas and concepts far closer to the surface than more ambitious examinations of the same topic. Sethi chooses a very particular tone for this film, which is certainly easily categorised as a romantic comedy, albeit one with a bit more complexity than the typical entries into the genre. There are many hilarious moments, usually formed from the expected misunderstandings and cultural differences that tend to make up the core of these films, but there are also many opportunities to make the film slightly more nuanced. While queer stories are becoming a lot more prominent, they are still slightly more rare, which means that we can’t find films that explore same-sex attraction that are purely effervescent all that easily, and instead, each one feels the need to make some kind of statement. This film does make sure that everything is logical and never tenuous to the point where it is unconvincing, but it does feel impelled to make its position clear, which entails commenting on social biases and the prejudices faced by the queer community, even when they exist in seemingly more accepting, open-minded environments. Mercifully, the director leans more into the humour than he does the heavy-handed emotions, and while we can easily predict nearly every narrative beat, it doesn’t invalidate the merits of A Nice Indian Boy, which is less about the message and more about how it is delivered, which is through a sincere, heartfelt approach to looking at love from several different perspectives, avoiding becoming too overwrought but still having enough time and space to earn our affection.

However, most of the credit for the success of this film has to go to the cast – the story is delightful, but it is only able to make an impression if the actors are willing to take the time to develop well-crafted, meaningful characters, which is not a particularly easy process, nor one that we find to be guaranteed. Sethi had the immense fortune of putting together a fantastic cast – none of them can be considered particularly major stars, but rather people who are perfect matches for the roles they are playing. The protagonist is played by Karan Soni, who is stellar as the skittish and paranoid Naveen, a young man who yearns for a happy life but finds himself consistently at odds with those around him. He’s complemented by Jonathan Groff as his co-lead, playing the love interest who immediately captures his heart and soul, and whose affection for him is the core of the film. Groff had the unenviable challenge of playing a character that could have been insufferable at best, and outrageously offensive at worst – he’s essentially asked to play a character who exists between cultures, and while he could have become nothing more than a parody, Groff finds a sensitivity that ties the entire film together. The same can be said for Zarna Garg and Harish Patel, who also have the challenging task of playing the stern Indian parents of the protagonist – and mercifully, Sethi spends enough time developing the characters with the actors to prevent them from becoming caricatures. It’s a pair of very loving performances, and both actors can find both the humour and pathos in these characters, who are beautifully rendered by them both, becoming exceptionally moving characters who are simultaneously compelling and complex, while also being truly funny, a credit not only to their individual performances, but also the film’s ability to bring out their best qualities in the process.

Taken for what it is, A Nice Indian Boy is a relatively decent film, even if it doesn’t manage to entirely escape the same one-dimensional cliches that we have grown to view as being far too symbolic of the genre. This is instead a film that is as sweet as it is sensible – there’s very little need for it to attempt to redefine the genre or make it anything that it should not be, focusing less on innovation and more on the genuine emotions that are nestled right at the core of the story, which is where we extract the most meaning. It’s a very charming film, and one that is not afraid to be conventional when it is required. There is something truly lovely about how it approaches a lot of its underlying themes, which it does with a blend of heart and soul, and a never-ending supply of hilarity, finding the humour in some of the most unexpected of places. If nothing else, A Nice Indian Boy proves to be a film that is willing to have the difficult conversations, even if they are filtered into a far easier and more accessible format – it’s not hard-hitting or revolutionary in its perspective, but rather genuinely reliable and consistently compelling, even at its most predictable. The performances are excellent and have a sincerity to them that we find very much aligns with the better entries into this genre, and its willingness to simply have the conversations is worth every ounce of our attention, even if it can be quite conventional at the best of times. It’s a solid film, and one that is endlessly entertaining, which is ultimately the primary purpose – everything else that it achieves along the way is simply an additional bonus that helps make A Nice Indian Boy a well-crafted, effective romantic comedy that never shies away from its roots, and instead celebrates the human condition in unexpected and captivating ways.