Love is now progressive but have men kept pace, social media influencer Pavi asks her followers. The Netflix release Pyaar Prema Kalyanam has other rhetorical questions in store for viewers, such as the one posed by the hero, Elan, to his mother: am I still a child?

Elan, played by the Tamil film’s director Elan, is allegedly an adult. Elan chucks a lucrative job in Dubai because he misses his amma’s dosas. Back in Chennai, Elan submits to his strict father’s demand to get married – without seeing the bride.

She is the aforementioned Pavi (Saanve Megghna), who has been brought up by her parents (Elango Kumaravel and Radikaa Sarathkumar) to be independent. We don’t need to take a gender studies class or be a fan of 1980s family melodramas to know what that means.

After the unemployed Elan and the gainfully employed Pavi are married, she refuses to move into his home, demanding that he become a house husband instead. Elan warps into the male version of the housewife who cooks and cleans incessantly while his spouse puts the money on the table, much to the shock of his parents (MS Bhaskar and Geetha Kailasam).

Pyaar Prema Kalyanam is a spiritual sequel to Elan’s Pyaar Prema Kaadhal (2018). That film explored the seesawing romance between a man who badly wants to wed and a woman who prefers to live in. In the new movie, Elan and Pavi question their decision to rush into wedlock for different reasons.

Nivedita Pohankar’s screenplay loosely tosses around au courant lingo like toxic, red flags and green flags and feminism. For all its trail-blazing ambitions, the comedy is most comfortable around the age-old debate over how married couples should adjust to the demands of their parents.

The satire on Gen Z wokeism and unacknowledged dependency itself isn’t all that receptive to fresh explorations of family dynamics. There are surely simpler ways to deal with overbearing kin – demonstrated in the witty and insightful series Aga Aai Aaho Aai on ZEE5.

It’s the kind of movie in which the “first night” is still a big deal; where moving out is unthinkable, supposedly because of Elan’s unemployment but more because the filmmakers want to mine humour out of Elan’s interactions with his in-laws and Pavi’s wheelchair-bound grandfather (Senthil).

Elan’s immaturity and Pavi’s shallowness supply enough content for comedy, if not quite food for thought. The film is on the side of Elan, who is duly humiliated as he goes grocery shopping and washes clothes. Elan’s friend Vinoth (Yogi), who treats his own wife like a doormat, is a regular reminder to Elan of his steady emasculation.

Competent performances keep the movie on an even keel. Radikaa Sarathkumar features prominently in Elan’s awkward attempts to fit in while asserting his rights as a son-in-law. MS Bhaskar is a convincing domestic tyrant.

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