Set in small-town Madurai, there is a certain freshness and quietness in Meenakshi Sundareshwar which the Hindi film audience, bombarded as we are by Punjabi boisterousness, especially in family films that involve a big fat wedding, has (grudgingly) come to accept. In this film — where a case of mistaken identity at an arranged marriage meeting leads to a divine coincidence and a quick marriage — jigarthanda takes the place of lassi and the soulful strains of Carnatic music play out instead of pulsating bhangra beats. The wedding — of Meenakshi (Sanya Malhotra) and Sundareshwar (Abhimanyu Dassani, credited only as Abhimanyu here) — takes place within the first 20 minutes, with Debojeet Ray’s frames capturing both the colour and the energy of a cityscape we aren’t quite used to seeing on the Bollywood screen.

But that’s just about it. Meenakshi Sundareshwar, now playing on Netflix, has a premise brimming with potential — how does an arranged marriage set-up between two virtual strangers survive through distance and time? — but the execution of the idea is so languid, often bordering on the boring, that Meenakshi Sundareshwar, playing out over 141 minutes, soon turns into a snooze fest.

And that’s because the film, directed by debutant Vivek Soni, doesn’t really have a believable conflict that makes you invest in its lead pair or even root for their relationship. Meenakshi, a hardcore Rajinikanth fan who dances in front of the screen at every first day-first show of a Thalaiva film, and Sundareshwar, who only understands the language of coding and claims that movies put him to sleep, get hardly a few hours together after marriage. The boy has to dash off to Bangalore for a long-cherished internship opportunity, and the girl is left behind, hoping to join him soon.

Their getting-to-know-each-other phase happens only through voice and video calls, and before long, the cracks start showing up. Soni, operating out of a script that he’s co-written with Aarsh Vora, raises pertinent issues about family and the tricky balance between making a relationship tick even while achieving career goals, but somehow, none of these elements come together seamlessly to make for a compelling enough story.

The subtlety with which Meenakshi Sundareshwar goes about its business works up to a point, but then you want to physically shake the film awake. For, nothing really happens. Instead, we are left to chew on a contrived conflict where Sundareshwar’s firm allows only bachelors to work in it, and Meenakshi’s growing closeness to a male friend becomes a thorn in the relationship. Meenakshi Sundareshwar labours on for well over two hours, and even the Rajinikanth-powered adrenaline shot at the end (no, the man doesn’t put in a cameo, he just appears on a screen within the screen) is not enough to make you remember this film even two minutes after the screen goes blank.

That also has a lot to do with how its leading man is written. Abhimanyu struggles to make what is an uninteresting character interesting, and his perpetual deer-caught-in-the-headlights expression does him no favours. The rest of the actors are well cast, but the film fails to rise above some stereotypes. I have also been told that the film’s sporadic use of Tamil suffers on account of incorrect pronunciation and accent.

In the end, it’s left to Sanya Malhotra to do the heavy lifting. The actor, who sparkled in Pagglait a few months ago, does her best — the uninhibited dance at the end is a definite win — but Meenakshi Sundareshwar is clearly a case of what could have been.

Meenakshi Sundareshwar

Director: Vivek Soni

Cast: Sanya Malhotra, Abhimanyu

Running time: 141 minutes