You know you’re in good hands when one of the concerns that the Central Board of Film Certification has with a film is that there’s a man reciting the Hanuman Chalisa and despite this, a ghost continues to hover over him. Mind you, this is a ghost — an unreal element — in a feature film, which is fiction, which in turn makes the ghost meta imaginary, but why should that stop the CBFC? It doesn’t matter how small the intersection is between those who watch Phillauri, know the Hanuman Chalisa by heart, and generally encounter ghosts. CBFC has got their back. And so it is that spooky Anushka Sharma is not Hanuman Chalisa-resistant in Phillauri and neither is she fluent in gibberish, which is what a barely-alive Suraj Sharma mumbles when faced with her as the ghost he’s ended up marrying unwittingly.

Suraj plays Kannan, a Canada-returned 26-year-old who comes home to Punjab to get married. True to the North American desi stereotype, he’s a reluctant bridegroom who kinda loves his childhood sweetheart but also has cold feet and a face that provides evidence that a whine is not a sound, but a state of mind.

Left to Anvita Dutt’s characters, dialogues and screenplay, Phillauri is a tired story with little going for it. Fortunately, with the help of solid directing, disciplined editing and the presence of one star, the film is rise above the mediocrity of its raw material. Anushka Sharma can pat herself on the back for producing a film that is dramatically different from her production house, Clean Slate’s first offering, NH 10. Yet there are certain things the two films have in common (aside from Anushka in the lead and casting a forgettable male actor opposite her). Like NH 10, Phillauri is a modest, unpretentious film. It is powered by a heroine, whom patriarchy tries to stifle.

However, Phillauri, set in a Punjabi wedding, is fluffier, sparklier and entirely unrealistic. If it’s a bit odd that the two families discover Kannan is manglik only five days before a lavish wedding, then it’s odder that Kannan is suddenly haunted by a ghostly Shashi (Anushka). There are steady attempts to milk the fact that only Kannan can hear or see Shashi – one extended joke involves domestic help, homosexuality, and a paranoia about predatory employers.

Phillauri‘s real weakness is that the present-day romance is utterly unmemorable. It’s not as though Suraj or Pirzada are bad as the younger leads. They’re just lacklustre. Both they and the audience are deeply aware that they’re the fillers for the older couple’s story.

Intellectuals may ask why we’re taken back in time to when life was a little more buttery yellow and Shashi was alive. This is because Anuskha Sharma is the producer of the film; too good and successful an actress to be reduced to playing the teary fiancee that debutante Pirzada plays; and entirely lovely.

And so it is that we go back to the golden days of Shashi’s lived youth, when she wrote poetry and canoodled with the rather dreamy Diljit Dosanjh. Dosanjh is Phillauri, a good-for-nothing, drunkard folk singer who the town of Phillaur thinks is a poet. Of course they fall in love, and thank heavens they do because the romance between the two Phillauris is the most charming part of the film. It shows a young woman tentatively finding her voice, a young man growing up and an older man who could be a role model for over-protective big brothers everywhere.

The only surprise in Phillauri is the grim setting it offers for the ultimate happily-ever-afters. Surrounded by unhappy, lingering ghosts — just because they sparkle, it doesn’t make someone happy. Just ask Edward Cullen — two young people decide they’re going to attempt to love and stand by one another forever. Any more Gothic and they’d have Dracula in there. Aside from that one detail, Phillauri is trope after stereotype followed by cliché. You’ve seen all the set-ups that the film offers and you may even be familiar with the punchlines. From the boozy grandparent to the bossy mother and the reformed Casanova, everyone and everything is true to type.

And yet Phillauri manages to make you feel warm and fuzzy. You’ll laugh a little, cry a little and nod in agreement with director Anshai Lal’s vision because it’s so doggone happy. Yes of course death is a sparkly affair and nirvana is like the coming together of a disco ball and a star-studded galaxy — this is a Punjabi death, after all.

Anushka lights up this film, literally with her golden computer-generated shimmer and metaphorically with her on-screen charisma. She gets to show off her emotive skills, comedic timing and if it wasn’t for the complete absence of chemistry with Dosanjh, Anushka’s performance would have been flawless. It’s a shame that Dosanjh just doesn’t have enough to do in the film. As Roop Lal Phillauri, Dosanjh has to stand around, look pretty, sing a song or two and get slapped a couple of times — which is essentially a summary of every heroine’s role in vintage Bollywood. Much like those actresses, Dosanjh leaves you longing for more.

Phillauri’s charm is that it’s unpretentious and feel-good. Anushka holds on to her credentials as being a producer who makes small films that have a whole lot of heart. If you feel like the world is falling apart all around you, this is a film that’ll make you feel warm and fuzzy for a few hours. Who’s to say that’s not enough?