The sound design during the wedding prep scenes in Phillauri is weirdly aggressive, with brass instruments peaking so hard in the mix that you can practically see the audio clipping on screen. It is a small thing that bugged me, mostly because the film spends so much of its opening runtime trying to establish a breezy, low-stakes rom-com atmosphere before throwing a centuries-old ghost into the mix. If I'm honest, Punjabi weddings on film have become such a predictable visual soup of yellow marigolds and over-lit lawn venues that I almost checked out before the supernatural stuff even started. But then Shashi shows up, sitting on a charpoy with a sullen look that immediately cuts through the usual frantic energy of Hindi movies. She is a reluctant specter stuck in a tree because of an astrologically inconvenient marriage to a dog, which sounds like standard folklore until you realize the script actually lets her be annoyed about it rather than whimsical. Her haunting isn't grand or terrifying; it’s just mildly inconvenient for her and deeply confusing for Kanan, the terrified groom-to-be who happens to be the only person in Punjab capable of seeing her.

Anshai Lal directs with a certain looseness that works wonders for the first hour, avoiding the hyper-polished sheen that ruins half of all contemporary Bollywood releases by making everything look like a paint commercial. He lets scenes breathe, sometimes lingering on empty doorways or the slow drift of dust motes in sunlight, which gives the period flashbacks a tactile weight that contrasts nicely with the modern wedding chaos. The screenplay, credited to Anvita Dutt, jumps between 1919 Phillaur and present-day Chandigarh without getting entirely lost in its own timeline mechanics, though the transition beats occasionally rely on the kind of blunt match cuts you would expect from a first-time feature. There is a genuine warmth to the way the past is rendered, not as a glorious freedom-fighter epic or a sweeping tragedy, but as a dusty, slow-moving provincial reality where young men wrote poetry because there was literally nothing else to do. Diljit Dosanjh’s character, the local troubadour and versifier Roop Lal Phillauri, embodies that era with a casual swagger that never feels forced or overly rehearsed for the camera.

Dosanjh is doing heavy lifting here, anchoring the historical romance with a physical presence that reminds you why he became a music star in the first place, carrying every lyrical line with an offhand grace. When he sings, the film temporarily forgets its own plot machinery and just sits in the beauty of the composition, letting the camera track his face as he performs in front of small village gatherings. It’s a performance that shares some DNA with Shah Rukh Khan’s softer, more melancholic work in Asoka, though without the historical baggage or the operatic melodrama. Opposite him, Anushka Sharma plays Shashi with a dry, deadpan frustration that subverts the manic pixie ghost trope before it can even take root. She spends a lot of time rolling her eyes at mortal stupidity, and her chemistry with Suraj Sharma—who plays the sweating, panicking modern groom with wide-eyed panic—gives the movie its comedic spine. Suraj, who has mostly been asked to look terrified or traumatized in everything since Life of Pi, finally gets to loosen up and play a guy who is simply in over his head, dealing with a generational curse while trying to ignore the fact that his fiancée is wondering if he’s having a nervous breakdown.

The cinematography by Vishal Sinha captures the bleached-out yellows of the Punjabi plains and the moody, lantern-lit interiors of the colonial-era village with equal confidence, finding beauty in ordinary spaces without turning them into tourist postcards. Then there is the soundtrack, composed by Shashwat Sachdev, which uses traditional folk instrumentation alongside modern vocal arrangements without dropping into the kind of EDM-infused club tracks that usually plague Hindi films. "Dum Free" and "Sahiba" feel organic to the narrative, woven into the emotional states of the characters rather than dropped in as calculated chart-topping interludes designed to sell ringtones. Yet, there’s an editing choice during the musical montages where the same reaction shot of Suraj blinking in disbelief gets repeated three times across two songs, which feels like a lazy shortcut in an otherwise thoughtfully assembled project. It’s not a fatal flaw, but it pulls you out of the emotional momentum just as the period romance is starting to hit its stride.

Underneath the supernatural comedy and the wedding planning madness, the film is really about unfulfilled artistic ambition and the way ordinary people get erased by history. Roop Lal Phillauri isn't a freedom fighter or a saint; he is just a minor poet whose verses outlived his name, passed down through oral tradition until they became part of the local folklore without anyone remembering who actually wrote them. That thematic undercurrent saves the project from becoming just another disposable rom-com with a high-concept hook. The script treats its period characters with dignity, resisting the urge to make them heroic by modern standards, letting them be flawed, petty, and occasionally cowardly. When the climax arrives, it doesn't try to reinvent the ghost movie or deliver a massive, CGI-heavy spectacle, choosing instead to resolve on a quiet, bittersweet note about memory, regret, and the strange ways love lingers after the people are gone.