🧨 “Param Sundari” – A Case Study in How Not to Tell a Story

Fails on all pillars of Story-First Certification

🎭 When Bollywood Repeats a Joke That Wasn’t Funny the First Time

In 2013, Chennai Express exploded onto screens with the full weight of Shah Rukh Khan’s stardom and Deepika Padukone’s exaggerated accent—serving up a loud, stereotype-heavy masala that treated South India less like a real cultural landscape and more like a punchline waiting to happen. While it minted box office gold back then, it also planted the seeds of creative bankruptcy that would soon bloom into Disney-UTV’s slow collapse. One would think Bollywood had learned.

Apparently not.

Fast-forward to 2025, and Param Sundari is here—reviving the same problematic formula with less charisma, less novelty, and even less understanding of the culture it pretends to celebrate. It's as if the filmmakers found an old Chennai Express blueprint in a dusty filing cabinet and said, “Let’s do that again… but add more coconuts.”

But here’s the problem: What passed as “funny” or “cute” in 2013 now lands as lazy, tone-deaf, and deeply regressive. Janhvi Kapoor is no Deepika. And the audience of today isn’t the audience of 2013. In an era where storytelling must be nuanced, rooted, and inclusive to earn respect and resonance, Param Sundari comes off as a cringeworthy throwback to an India that no longer exists—if it ever did.

This analysis will show, through the lens of the Story-First Certification Pillars, why replicating the Chennai Express playbook was a strategic blunder—and how Param Sundari became a prime example of what happens when filmmakers double down on stereotypes instead of substance.

Chennai Express (2013) - Rohit Shetty’s need to maintain his characters’ romantic heroism constantly grates against his depictions of their ridiculousness.

Let’s dive into Bollywood’s latest RomCom offering - Param Sundari.

Story-First Certification Analysis of a Stereotype-Heavy Bollywood Misfire

❌ 1. Believability:

FAIL — A fantasy Bollywood keeps writing for itself.

“Param Sundari” is set in Kerala — a region with one of the richest storytelling traditions in Indian cinema — yet the film offers a version of Kerala so synthetic it feels like a tourism ad run through Google Translate and a Diwali firecracker filter. Janhvi Kapoor’s “Thekkapetta Sundari Damodaran Pillai” is introduced with a name that literally translates to “dumped beauty” in Malayalam — a linguistic blunder that either no one bothered to research or was intended as a joke without realizing the deep cultural faux pas. It’s the opposite of immersive. Instead of world-building, the film world-shrinks, reducing an entire culture into props: jasmine, coconuts, and badly dubbed backwaters.

And let’s not even start on the Malayalam — or what the film thinks is Malayalam. It’s so tortured it deserves its own therapy session.

➡️ Story-First Verdict: Unreal world. Unresearched context. Unforgivable sloppiness.

No believability, just Bollywood cosplay in a Kerala costume.

💔 2. Emotional Engagement:

FAIL — A hollow checklist of ‘feels’ without lived emotion.

From the first frame, “Param Sundari” doesn’t try to make us feel—it tries to tell us what to feel using cue cards disguised as dialogue. The titular character’s dramatic outburst about North Indians being “ignorant, illiterate, entitled” is positioned as a meta moment—but collapses under the weight of irony. Why? Because it’s not real rage, it’s performative rage—a line written by the same creators who caricature the South, now pretending to defend it.

There's no lived experience, no complexity, no emotional truth. This is manufactured sentiment stitched together from tropes, not moments.

➡️ Story-First Verdict: Audience alienation. Zero empathy. Manufactured emotion.

No emotional arc. Just aesthetic noise.

Param Sundari - Official Trailer | Sidharth M | Janhvi K | Dinesh V | Tushar J

🧠 3. Intellectual Compellingness:

FAIL — Nothing to think about here… move along.

Films that challenge stereotypes ask questions. This one recycles answers from a 1968 comedy sketch. What could have been a thoughtful reflection on cultural misrepresentation and pan-Indian identity politics instead becomes a self-parody. “Param Sundari” offers nothing original to ponder. No new insights. No layers. No intellectual stimulation. It thinks referencing Mohanlal and Rajinikanth is clever when it's actually a weak diversion from its lack of substance.

➡️ Story-First Verdict: No ideas. No layers. No thoughtfulness.

Just marketing dressed up as meta-awareness.

🌍 4. Relevance:

FAIL — Tone-deaf to the cultural moment it’s in.

In 2025, when films like All We Imagine As Light, The Family Man, and even Ludo have shown how to root characters in real cultural contexts with specificity and dignity, “Param Sundari” plays like a parody reel of everything the audience is tired of. The film throws in visual signifiers of Kerala like props — Mohiniyattam dancers, coconut trees, banana leaves — but shows no understanding of the people, their identity, or their language.

It clings to an outdated belief that South = Madrasi = Comedy Sketch.

That’s not just irrelevant — it’s regressive.

➡️ Story-First Verdict: Out of touch. Out of sync.

Outdated.

India has moved on. Bollywood hasn’t.

🕊️ 5. Meaningfulness:

FAIL — What was the point?

Was this about womanhood? Cultural pride? Identity? Nothing lands.

“Param Sundari” tries to dress up a shallow romcom with forced “wokeness,” but ends up disrespecting the very cultures it tries to reference. There’s no thematic soul, no transformation, no catharsis. Just a synthetic, surface-level narrative made to sell songs and stunts.

Meaning is born from truth. But truth has been the biggest casualty here.

➡️ Story-First Verdict: No deeper meaning. No point of view. No artistic courage.

Just another forgettable entry in Bollywood’s trope library.

🛑 Final Certification Status: NOT CERTIFIED

Badge: ⚠️ Story-First Verdict: Improvement Required (Severe)

The writing of the verdict of an Indian film is often loud and clear in its trailer. “Param Sundari” fails on all five certification pillars and demonstrates an urgent need for Bollywood creators to upgrade their storytelling lens—or risk cultural irrelevance.

📢 Closing Thought:

Representation isn’t a joke. It’s not a costume. And it’s not a punchline.

As Pooja Prasanna rightfully put it:

"Representation is not about being visible. It’s about being seen — truthfully."

When Bollywood turns regions, identities, and languages into mere flavoring for its outdated recipe, it doesn't just misrepresent — it disrespects. And it disconnects from a new India that demands better.

🎬 Want to See What Story-First Actually Looks Like?

Then it’s time to read Book 2 of the Filmistan Rewrite Generation Series:

"SCREEN TEST" - it’s fairness, visibility, and the courage to inhabit truth.

✨ A merit-based, emotionally compelling, culturally rooted story✨ Featuring a South Indian actor who becomes the character✨ Built on the five pillars of Story-First Certification

🎬 No More Shortcuts — Why Story-First Is the Only Way Forward

Param Sundari isn’t just another forgettable film—it’s a flashing red warning sign for the Indian film industry. In its attempt to bottle the outdated lightning of Chennai Express, it exposed something far more concerning: a continued disregard for truth, for authenticity, and for the intelligence of audiences who crave emotional resonance and narrative depth. When your story-world is stitched together with stereotypes, when your characters are cardboard cutouts, and when your idea of “culture” is caricature, you not only insult the regions you depict—you sabotage your own credibility.

This isn’t just a creative issue. It’s an existential one.

In an era when Korean, Iranian, and even regional Indian films (like Malayalam cinema) are earning global applause by being specific, culturally rooted, and story-strong, Bollywood is still flirting with tropes from a decade ago. But the global stage has changed. Streaming has democratized access. Audiences are savvier. Stories must now be earned—with layered writing, real research, and a deep respect for the world you're creating.

This is why the Story-First Certification Pillars—believability, emotional engagement, intellectual compellingness, relevance, and meaningfulness—aren’t just academic tools. They are survival mandates. They demand that filmmakers do the hard work: of understanding the places they set their stories in, of grounding characters in truth, and of building story-worlds that feel lived-in, not phoned in.

Until Bollywood embraces this rigor, it will continue to lose relevance—both at home and abroad.

Want to learn what the Story-First rigor means for Indian Cinema? Grab the “STORY-FIRST WORKBOOK” and internalize its perspective into your filmmaking.

Rewrite, reinvent, and resonate, with the Storytelling Craft

So here’s the truth, plain and simple:

🎥 If Indian cinema wants to stand tall on the world stage, it must first learn to kneel at the altar of craft.

The world is watching. It's time we give them stories worth remembering.