7 Days: Review

This low budget covid-based dramedy takes a look at the nature of love and unlikely relationships. But with surface level characters and a thin storyline its efforts are hampered.

Two young Indian-Americans have been set up by relatives to go on a date, which turns out painfully awkward. It’s the start of the pandemic and as the country shuts down Ravi (Karan Soni) has nowhere else to stay but at Rita’s (Geraldine Viswanathan) house. 

​Thrown together, this desperately different pair start to learn the benefits of each other’s attitudes and break down their differences. 

The pandemic provides a convenient way to explore how people get along in difficult circumstances and examine how people interact. Here we have a clean and organised vegetarian mummy’s boy spreadsheet enthusiast staying with a slobbish swearing meat-eater. But those stereotypes do far too much heavy lifting and the characters are left with very little actual depth. 

Ravi is painted as quite an effeminate person who believes in love, while Rita embodies a lot of tropes of masculinity. She can’t cook or clean, she swigs beer, talks openly about sex and makes no effort with her appearance. It is great to see a man so deeply believing in love and actively trying to find it, but that’s undermined by this gender-swap style of characterisation. 

Indeed, some of Rita’s actions in particular are reprehensible, particularly if the genders were reversed. Just because they were done by a female doesn’t make them ok or funny.

So when these two are put together neither personality has enough teeth to create much tension or drama. Being stuck in the house together also doesn’t create much story in itself so there’s very little by way of plot. 

The more interesting aspect is the theme of arranged marriages. The film asks us to consider the nature of love and whether it comes as a big swell of sudden feelings or whether it can be nurtured and manufactured. The point seems to be that love doesn’t choose you, but that you choose love. 

​This may sit well with some but what of the audiences who believe that love comes before marriage and not the other way around? “7 Days” (2021) doesn’t tell us exactly what to think but it does wave a flag for choosing to get to know somebody and consciously choosing to love them.

The film has a very simple story and an interesting underlying message. It’s light and an easy watch. But it’s also a little saccharine. If you’re looking for something with a bit more depth or drama may wish to look elsewhere.