Finally Drops This Gay Rom-Com With a Bollywood Twist

The heyday of romantic comedies has long since passed. The classics were all born somewhere between 1987 and 2005, and their tendency toward a certain formula made many people steer clear of the genre even then. Moreover, almost all of them centered on heterosexual couples.

Of course there have been a few queer Rom-Coms since, but there remains a sense that the genre still has some ground to cover. This is especially true for queer stories with a Happy Ending — long a rarity, yet something fans have come to expect from romantic comedies, no matter what misadventures precede it.

Quasi-Indian Through Adoption

And so it goes with “A Nice Indian Boy.” People rarely fear that Naveen Gavaskar (Karan Soni) and Jay Kurundkar (Jonathan Groff) might not end up together. Naveen is a successful doctor who is out about his job—and about his life—with his family. In fact, his mother phones him to recount in detail what happens in “Milk” (2008), which she recently caught on a queer TV channel.
While their daughter Arundhathi (Sunita Mani) is already married — the movie opens with her flamboyant wedding — their more introverted son remains stubbornly single, a worry for their parents. They hope he will someday meet a nice Indian boy, a “nice Indian boy.” That hopeful figure arrives in the form of photographer Jay, a white American who, though he worships at a Hindu temple, also carries the surname Kurundkar because he was adopted long ago by an Indian couple who have since passed away.
Naveen and Jay click instantly and soon become a couple. But while Jay longs to feel part of an Indian family again, Naveen isn’t sure how to tell his family that his great love isn’t Indian. All the more so because his parents would never have allowed his sister to marry a White man. This inner conflict spawns both tension and a lot of humor — and eventually it becomes a Bollywood film classic that clears the way for a big, joyous, gay Indian wedding.

Financing Thanks to Jonathan Groff
“A Nice Indian Boy” is based on a 2014 stage play, directed by Roshan Sethi, who is married to the film’s star, Karan Soni. In an interview at the London Film Festival, the two explained how the story spoke to them because it mirrored much of their own experience. “The story was perfectly tailored to us, something Hollywood rarely offers,” says Karan Soni. Roshan Sethi concedes that the conventions of the romantic comedy genre aren’t exactly friendly to fresh storytelling, but he believes the film succeeds thanks to the Indian family dynamics and the cultural rifts the characters navigate. “It also feels almost like a Bollywood romance,” Soni adds, “and it is inspired by those. Yet for Western audiences, Bollywood is often a challenge, so our film presents a more accessible take.”
Jonathan Groff was the obvious first choice for the role of Jay, though he only realized in early talks that his co-star was also gay and married to the director. “The chemistry between us turned out to be a stroke of luck,” says Soni. Groff’s involvement was crucial to securing funding for the project. “Without the name of a well-known white actor, it’s very difficult to mount such a project,” explains Sethi, “that’s still how things work.”

Queer Bollywood

For Groff, immersing himself in Indian culture was an exciting experience, as he explained in another interview. “I wasn’t familiar with Bollywood films before, so I watched a few to prepare. And these films are incredibly gay! So over-the-top, so flamboyant — and that energy also shines in the Indian weddings. It’s fitting that a gay couple is at the center for once.”
The result is not only highly entertaining and funny but also wonderfully warm — a movie you can happily watch with the whole family. It’s truly past time that “A Nice Indian Boy” — a year after its U.S. release — finally gets a proper official release in Germany as well!
“A Nice Indian Boy” is not officially available in Germany, but can be streamed in the United States on Apple TV, Prime Video, or Fandango with a VPN.