It is often very hard to balance emotions, personal bonding and love for the trivial pleasures along with a touch of humor that is warm and fuzzy. And when you finally get it at the right concoctions, you have a good movie. Luv shuv tey chicken khurana has managed to entice the audience with its freshness though it takes its own sweet time to reveal itself to the viewers.

A smart young man, driven by reasons beyond his control, leaves London for his roots in a Punjabi village speckled with the yellow flowers of mustard fields. There, he’s enveloped by a largish family. He’s an instant hit with almost all of them, except the stern and suspicious patriarch. And then there’s the looming wedding of the girl who makes him whistle the tune to Tujhe dekha hai to jaana sanam… It’s hard not to leave Luv Shuv Tey Chicken Khurana wondering whether the director, Sameer Sharma, saw Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge as a child, and, unimpressed, vowed that he would one day show the Bollywood establishment how a Punjab-based romance should really be made. And in the process, he’s made the quintessential anti-Bollywood movie, hitting the same notes as a family-friendly crowd-pleaser but underplaying each one. Even the customary Lohri song (one of which was in another Yash Chopra production, Veer-Zaara) isn’t choreographed with synchronized steps, but as a lived-in celebration that a family member could have captured on a handycam.

With an unabashed affection, Sharma and his writer Sumit Batheja create a believable world, set in a village in Punjab, brimming with wonderfully eccentric characters. These include Daarji (Vinod Nagpal), the now-senile creator of Chicken Khurana, a dish so mouth-watering that the owner of a rival dhaba is willing to pay serious cash for it; Titu Mama (Rajesh Sharma), who feigns madness just so that he can freeload off his sister; and the sister, played wonderfully by Seema Kaushal, whose constant refrain is 'Bakwaasnakar, Titu.'

These oddballs are so much fun that they make the lead pair, played by Kunal Kapoor and Huma Qureshi, seem a little bland. There are some lovely comic moments, a genuinely emotional climactic dinner sequence and an enjoyable music score by Amit Trivedi. But the downside is that Sharma tells his quirky story at such a languorous pace that you start to squirm in your seat.

Call it a certain oomph, call it the X factor. Call it the knockout uppercut. LSTCK is a screenwriting guru’s dream script. Establishment, conflict, three acts, character’s choices, resolutions are all lined up in a manner that you see them coming from a mile away. The problem is that it is boring. Given the setup, you know far too early on that everything’s going to be perfectly tied up and indeed there are no twists or surprises, only minor hurdles and their solutions. As the story trundles along, the pieces fall elegantly into place like a jigsaw puzzle that you’re constructing using a finished reference image. You already knew what it looked like to begin with; it was just a matter of getting there. In the end you come out feeling a little empty and dissatisfied but then again, also a little hungry for some Chicken Khurana.