Story: - kanan accidently marries a ghost, shashi while conducting pre-wedding rituals to get rid of bad luck but as luck would have it shashi sticks around and turns into his agony aunt
Review: - nothing is scarier than falling in love and having the ghost of your memories toghether haunt you. But kanan( Suraj Sharma) is experiencing a haunting of a more specific kind He is’nt bothered by memories of a former lover but by an actual ghost in love from another era.
Kanan marries a tree to word off back luck before his wedding and the tree turns out to be resting place of Shashi( Anushka Sharma) who lived and loved there almost a hundred years ago. As a result this marriage shashi is bound to kanan who must figure out the way to take care of unfinished business that causing her to linger around
Conceptually, Phillauri is a winner and much was evident from the trailer. The idea is superbly origional, culturally on point and has great. Potential the problem is, only get what you see in the trailer. Nothing more ( and thankfully nothing less) . The hillariously exciting one line plot develops into two and a half hours film that is full of romantic movie trops.
The invisibility of the ghost can only get so many laughs. The narrative shifts between Shashi’s past and Kanan’s present seems abrupt, the soulful songs are easy on the ears but strain your eyes by adding to the runtime, and most importantly, shashi’s story ( the emotionally care of the film) is largely formulic
The actor sweel in and carry the film sweep in and carry the film though with his body language and voice modulation Suraj sharma nails the confused aimless millennial and lightnes the mood. Mehreen perzada’s helpless and hopelessly-in-love Anu is endearing Diljit dosanjh brings his trademark goodness to a rather bland role.
And as the translucent ghost ( kudos to the VFX team) Anushka delivers a solid performance with wierd mix of sadness and humour.
It seems as though phillauri could have gone in a lot of directions but it took the road usually travelled.