First things first – Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga (ELKDTAL) is not a path breaking film based on LGBTQ community. That honour goes to Aligarh.

Good thing is that ELKDTAL doesn’t claim to be one. It’s a nice, feel good film about same sex love between two girls and how they overcome the societal pressure to be together. Nothing heavy duty (like Unfreedom) here, nothing that you cannot watch with family. Unless until you really have a family member who just can’t handle this. On second thoughts, people like them must watch ELKDTAL for the film does manage to make a point.

More than sexual preference, it teaches parents to let kids decide what’s good or bad for them on many levels. For instance, apart from the love story of Sweetie (Sonam Kapoor) and Kuhu (Regina Cassandra), there are sub plots like Anil Kapoor’s obsession with becoming a cook (a womanly thing according to his mother) but being stuck in garments business, The male dominance at home, everyone talking about shaadi like it’s the end all and be all of the world and last but not the least Hindu Muslim inter-community relationship/marriages. The film touches various issues without letting the central theme slip away. And that’s how life is – even when the biggest issue of one’s life is how to tell the parents about the sexuality, there are career issues, weight issues, pimple issues and what not… (Aur bhi gham hain jamane mein mohabbat ke siva)

Directed by Shelly Chopra Dhar, the film’s pace is just right, neither too fast nor too slow. The narrative never gets too sad. Whenever film gets heavy, Juhi Chawla is there to provide comic relief and after years we saw her doing something this good. Her over the top performance as a Punjabi caterer is as fresh as her timeless smile. We just love her in ELKDTAL.

Another reason why we love ELKDTAL is because it doesn’t just celebrate LGBTQ pride, it celebrates theatre as a medium of storytelling. We are huge fans of theatre and always believe that theatre is the perfect medium to bring positive changes in society. ELKDTAL beautifully uses this medium to tell the story of a lesbian couple to the conservative locals of Moga in Punjab. Sahil Mirza (Raj Kumar Rao) as a playwright, writes and directs his first masterpiece to help Sweety out who he fell for. Indian cinema is lucky to have someone like Rajkumar Rao as a mainstream actor. Even after being so successful, we never see the greed in him to hog the limelight. He’s there just enough to take the story forward. What a beautiful performance from him once again.

In fact after very long we saw a film with no hero or heroine. Everybody is a character in the film. Be it Sonam Kapoor, Anil Kapoor, Juhi Chawla or Raj Kumar Rao, nobody gets a stronger role than others, nobody is a first lead or a second lead. In fact, though not so significant to the story, the most impressive character in the film is played by Brijendra Kala as Chaube. What an actor… is this the age of character artists? They are outshining bigger stars in almost every second film. He’s one character in the film that lingers on in our memory for days after we watched the film. Beautiful comic timing and brilliant dialogue delivery.

The climax makes you emotional just enough to leave a lump in the throat and stops right before you start jerking tears. We need more films like Ek ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga that are mainstream, entertaining, issue based and most importantly, not show non-believers in homosexuality in bad light. Once again this is a film that makes us believe that love is love and it will save the day.