A Nice Indian Boy (2025)

Every so often, a film comes along that nudges the boundaries of a genre not by loudly announcing its cleverness but by gently reimagining what sincerity can look like. A Nice Indian Boy, directed by Roshan Sethi and adapted from Madhuri Shekar’s much-loved play, does exactly that. It wears the familiar trappings of a romantic comedy—misunderstandings, meet-cutes, parental disapproval—but with a cultural specificity and emotional intelligence that elevate it well above the formula.

The story centres on Naveen Gavaskar, a dutiful son navigating the complexities of queer identity within a traditional Indian family. He’s affable, conscientious, and—according to his parents—at the age where weddings should be in the planning, not theoretical. When he does fall for someone, it’s not quite the scenario his family had in mind. What unfolds is a delicate exploration of love, culture, expectation, and the strange ways families show both care and resistance—sometimes at the same time.

To its great credit, the film never stoops to caricature. Instead, it treats its characters as people first, with all the contradictions, hopes, and blind spots that entails. The humour is rooted in the real—those small domestic absurdities and generational misunderstandings that feel almost too familiar to be fictional. It’s the kind of laughter that comes from recognition rather than ridicule.

Karan Soni gives a beautifully judged performance as Naveen, capturing the tension between personal authenticity and filial loyalty with a warmth that never slips into sentimentality. Jonathan Groff, too, brings subtlety to a role that could easily have been flattened into a narrative device. Together, they offer a portrayal of love that feels lived-in and imperfect—which, of course, makes it all the more persuasive.

What’s striking is how confidently the film holds the line between gentle romanticism and deeper philosophical questions. Can tradition evolve without dissolving? Is love, in its truest form, a negotiation or a rebellion? These aren’t delivered as lecture points but woven into the texture of the story, letting us draw our own conclusions without being told what to think.

There’s a sociological resonance here too. The film reflects the reality of many diasporic families, particularly those negotiating questions of identity in countries where heritage and assimilation sit in an uneasy truce. Without ever losing its comic timing, the film acknowledges the difficulty of coming out not just as queer, but as noncompliant—with the script, the expectations, the imagined future your family quietly wrote for you while you were still in nappies.

Visually, the film leans into intimacy: close shots, warm lighting, spaces that feel lived-in rather than stylised. The direction is subtle, allowing the relationships to breathe, and the score hums along with understated charm. No grand gestures, no sweeping orchestral flourishes, just the slow unfolding of connection.

If there’s one small quibble—and it is small—it’s that the film’s final act leans towards the safe and familiar. It wraps things up a little too neatly, perhaps. Then again, in a world as fractured as ours, a bit of narrative closure might be a forgivable indulgence.

In sum, A Nice Indian Boy is exactly what romantic comedies have been missing; not just diversity of faces, but diversity of feeling. It’s a story about people who want to do the right thing, even when they’re not entirely sure what that is. And it’s about love, not in the abstract, but in the messy, marvellous particularity of how it arrives, disrupts, and heals.

Fresh, funny, and full of heart. Not perfect, but close enough to make you wish more films tried this hard to get it right.