Metacritic reviews

As a romantic comedy, 7 Days hardly circumvents a cinematic lexicon of time-honored tropes, but its skill in dismantling stereotypes, sexist beliefs, and even the process of falling in love offers a fresh and charming rejoinder to the cynicism of both its own genre and the emerging repetition of pandemic-set films.

Under the guise of a straightforward love story, Sethi’s film reveals itself to be an incisive look into the long-running Indian tradition of arranged marriages and its implications, set against the backdrop of a rapidly spreading COVID-19. If that sounds heavy, it’s anything but, the writer-director ensuring that things don’t get bogged down in ponderous polemic or pretentiousness.

While 7 Days occasionally goes too broad in juxtaposing Ravi and Rita, sometimes pitting them as ideological binaries instead of fully realized characters capable of vacillating in ideas, the film more often than not allows them to develop and shift as they get to know each other.

The complications in each character’s lives are funny, wholly believable and just nasty enough to rule out any second date as this never-ending first one staggers on and on, towards an ending we may see coming, but not without a few serious twists to navigate along the way.

This premise — of two people with divergent personalities potentially falling in love — is not new, but 7 Days satisfyingly freshens up a stale formula, thanks in large part to the lead performances.

7 Days is emotionally resonant, sweet, tender, and genuinely funny.

In the future, audiences may tire of movies about COVID-19. For the moment, however, 7 Days arrives as a funny, modest charmer.

As far as COVID movies go, 7 Days is certainly in the top tier of that still nascent subgenre—whether that’ll be true this time next year, we’ll have to wait and see.

Ultimately what stands out about 7 Days is its sharply scripted humor and leads’ incredible chemistry.

In some ways, Soni has the hardest job here: He’s got to make the rigidly old-fashioned, obsessively uptight Ravi likable enough that we want to see him end up with an independent woman. But Viswanathan has some hurdles too, and they wind up being tougher to overcome.