Wedding Season, a lively romcom set in the Indian American community of Newark, New Jersey, has the full signature of the House of Netflix. Its plot is a blend of cliches, its set design somewhere between serviceable and cheap, its acting either solidly watchable or borderline parody. It rearranges deeply familiar tropes into easy listening. It depicts a community in the US with enough knowledge to feel grounded and respectful, but with enough frivolity and romance to cater to, naturally, the global audience. Because of or despite these things, it’s baseline enjoyable to watch, its entertainment value less in how it makes you think or feel and more in how easy it is to submit to floating along the emotional current.
Directed by Shanghai Noon’s Tom Dey and written by Shiwani Srivastava, it could be described as the Netflix series Indian Matchmaking crossed with Hulu’s Four Wedding and a Funeral remake, mixed with the Netflix hit Never Have I Ever (one of the first shows to feature the child of Indian immigrants as a quintessential American teenager, created by Mindy Kaling), and shot through with the classic romcom ploy of deceptive courtship. It is more than that sum, although composed of obvious parts.
