A Nice Indian Boy Review: A Wedding Movie With a Sense of Humour

Yes, A Nice Indian Boy is worth watching. Roshan Sethi's rom-com is small, warm and unusually honest about the work of loving somebody your family has not met yet. Karan Soni and Jonathan Groff carry a story that could have been syrup and is instead funny, specific and a little bruised. Rotten Tomatoes, checked on October 22, 2026, has it at 95 percent from 77 reviews. Our rating is 8 out of 10.

Spoiler-free verdict: Watch it. A 96-minute Hindi-English romantic comedy with Karan Soni as the doctor and Jonathan Groff as the photographer, a wedding to plan and a family to win over. Rotten Tomatoes had it at 95 percent from 77 critic reviews when we checked on October 22, 2026. You need no plot summary before pressing play.

What A Nice Indian Boy is about

Naveen Gavaskar (Karan Soni) is an Indian-American doctor with a loud mother, Megha (Zarna Garg), a married sister, Arundhathi (Sunita Mani), and a father, Archit (Harish Patel), who has never once said the wrong thing out loud. At his sister's wedding six years earlier, everyone asked when he would be next, and he has been dodging the question since. Then he meets Jay Kurundkar (Jonathan Groff) at a temple, and Jay asks him to watch Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, and Naveen starts to fall.

Jay is a photographer, white, and adopted by Indian parents who have died. He is funny, fast and open in a way Naveen is not, and the movie is built on the friction between those two things. Naveen has also been lying to his family for years, describing Jay as a friend, and the film counts what that costs him before it asks him to pay up.

Cast and performances

Soni plays Naveen as a man who is very funny when he is frightened, which is most of the film. He does the small physical work of the character, the lowered eyes, the sudden brightness when Jay says something, and the film never once asks him to announce his feelings. Groff plays Jay with the easy confidence of someone who has never had to justify loving anybody, and with a kindness that keeps the character from becoming a prize.

The Gavaskar family is where the film earns its best material. Garg plays Megha with the timing of a woman who has been preparing a speech since the wedding she is now planning, and Mani gives Arundhathi a divorce and a dry wit in the same breath. Patel's Archit says almost nothing and carries the film's last change of heart entirely on his face.

What works

The comedy. The Observer's Rex Reed gave the film four stars and wrote that "Roshan Sethi's quietly confident film unspools a tender love story between two men...", a line that puts the family and the humour in one verdict. The Sydney Morning Herald's Karl Quinn was more precise about what the film is doing with the genre: "A Nice Indian Boy may not break too many rules, but it does play the rom-com game with an uncommonly high level of compassion and commitment that's to be applauded."

The family scenes. Nobody in this house is a villain, including the father. Ishmeet Nagpal at Mediaversity Reviews noticed how deliberate that is: "Familiar references and attention to detail make A Nice Indian Boy feel authentically Indian despite being set in the West."

The New York Times' Chris Azzopardi saw the wider frame: "In this vibrant addition to cinema's romantic landscape, love isn't the only winner: cultural understanding and the freedom to choose your own path triumph as well."

What doesn't

The middle stretch. The film takes a detour through a fight that a smaller movie would have cut, and it pays for that detour twice over. The Boston Globe's Odie Henderson still found the payoff worth the wait, calling it "pure joy watching Naveen grow and learn to experience what Jay calls 'the bigness of love'", and that is the right verdict on the last act.

The backstory of Jay. The film treats his adoption and his parents' deaths as a fact to be mentioned rather than a life to be lived, and the audience has to do that work in one line of dialogue.

The gloss. Raashi Kulkarni's score is pleasant and stays out of the way, and the film is polished in a way that flattens its rougher edges. The camera loves both leads a little too much, and the last stretch is staged with a light shower's efficiency that belongs to a bigger budget.

What audiences say

All figures checked on October 22, 2026. Rotten Tomatoes has the film at 95 percent from 77 critic reviews, with a 96 percent Popcornmeter from 100-plus verified ratings, and its critics consensus reads that the film is "buoyed by Karan Soni and Jonathan Groff's appealingly sweet performances, A Nice Indian Boy navigates cultural mores and romance with an infectiously kind heart". Metacritic has a Metascore of 85 from 7 critic reviews, labelled Universal Acclaim, plus a user score of 7.1 from 29 ratings. Letterboxd's member average is a weighted 3.62 from 53,858 ratings, with 63,284 members having watched it and 21,155 liking it, and the film sitting in 14,426 member lists. TMDB has it at 7.3 from 89 votes. We do not quote IMDb here, because the site blocks our checks.

The gap between the critics and the audience is the interesting number here. A 95 percent Tomatometer and a 3.62 on Letterboxd from more than 50,000 ratings says a great many people found it sweet and a great many more found it slight.

Where to watch A Nice Indian Boy

JustWatch, which checked 376 streaming services on October 22, 2026, lists A Nice Indian Boy on Hulu in the United States, with a subscription required, and as a rental or a purchase on Amazon Video, Fandango At Home and the Apple TV Store. It also streams free on Kanopy. The runtime is 96 minutes.

Current availability, cast details and member reviews sit on our A Nice Indian Boy streaming options and member reviews page.

Verdict

Is A Nice Indian Boy worth watching? Yes, and it is the rare romantic comedy that treats a family as people rather than as an obstacle. Belen Prieto at Espinof put it best when she said the film "proves that it is still possible to make a luminous, sincere and very emotional queer romantic comedy without resorting to pain as the main driving force". Rex Reed's Observer verdict, a small film with a big heart, is the other one worth carrying out of the cinema. Eight out of 10.

Spoiler warning: the ending of A Nice Indian Boy

The fight that breaks the couple up is triggered by Jay using a cannabis pen in Naveen's parents' bathroom and Arundhathi telling Megha and Archit about it, not by anything Naveen did. Jay takes it as proof that he does not belong, and moves out. Naveen goes after him and copies a scene from Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, the film they watched on their first date, and proposes properly this time. Jay accepts.

Megha starts planning the wedding at once. Archit resists, then invites Jay over to cook with him, learns who his son actually is, and comes around. Megha tells Naveen that the family has always accepted him, and that what they cannot stand is how far he has pushed them away while he was protecting them. At the wedding the Gavaskars perform a choreographed dance for Jay, Megha gives the speech that finally moves Archit to tears, and Arundhathi is comforted about her own divorce while she watches. The last image is Naveen and Jay dancing in the middle of the floor, surrounded by the family and friends they gathered around them.