A Nice Indian Boy
First screened in December 2025
Director: Roshan Sethi. Cast: Karan Soni, Jonathan Groff, Zarna Garg, Harish Patel, Sunita Mani, Peter S. Kim, Sachin Sahel, Sas Goldberg, Sean Amsing. Screenplay: Eric Randall (based on the play by Madhuri Shekar). In Brief:
Good heart, good jokes, three winning performances. Creaky filmmaking. Could have used a couple worth cheering.
VOR:③
Better as a "stop assuming you understand your parents" movie than a culturally attentive rom com, though both aspects are worth celebrating.
I started watching A Nice Indian Boy on Christmas night, while my partner was on the phone with friends. Actually, if you must know, let's rephrase: I started watching A Nice Indian Boy on Christmas night, the day after I married my partner of 26 years in a romantic, just-the-two-of-us Christmas Eve ceremony at City Hall, while my now-husband was taking calls from long-distance friends whom we had surprised, as we had everyone, with our news. I was in a sentimental and highly predisposed mood, and even so, I can't say A Nice Indian Boy was totally doing it for me. The lead, Karan Soni, has deft, soft-spoken comic timing. Veteran actor Harish Patel and lively comedienne Zarna Garg valuably upped the movie's game as Soni's parents, and the tone of the whole was aspirationally sweet. Still, the production values and camera fluency are really limited, the writing often clunky, and the pitch pretty broad. If one is, say, genetically inured to the widely presumed appeal of Jonathan Groff (including, I often feel, by Groff himself), that won't help endear you to his elaborately but not quite comically contrived role as a Hindi-speaking, Bollywood-singing, ganesh-tattooed, over-sharing, white adoptee of deceased Indian parents, whom we are to understand as both a fabulously great catch for Soni's Naveen and as the tremulous courtier who actively pursues Naveen and fears being rejected.
The bigger problem, enfolding but exceeding all the others, is that the ardently conceived but dully scripted Jay and the appealingly acted but skittish, conflict-avoidant, emotionally unavailable, wildly unready Naveen never seem like they're ready for couplehood. When the screenplay inevitably conspires to divide them midway through the plot, I knew which reasons to hiss at but shared most of the critiques of the meddlers and skeptics. When the phone calls ended in the next room, it was disappointingly easy to step away from the movie for 48 hours, and to take in three other films before resolving this one. Part of me was holding out for the movie I knew I wouldn't get, where these two stay friends but agree that they each have a lot of growing to do, alone.
I am happy to say that A Nice Indian Boy gets more winning in the second half, even if the Naveen/Jay romance remains a very wobbly, nearly abstract center. Garg and Patel only get better and their roles more nuanced. Those two are who I'll think of when I think back on this film. You also don't have to be a newlywed to be smitten with the climactic marriage ceremony, despite the chintzy digital photography and somewhat bare-bones staging. A Nice Indian Boy is a nice gay rental—we all know the type. A one-night stand or a sweet-but-no-sparks one-off date for most of us, but a viable longer-term love, I'm sure, for people who've been hankering for a movie exactly like this one. I wish I'd been that viewer, but I gradually saw more of the appeal. Grade:C+
