Isn’t that taken for granted or rather, the accepted standard, the unwritten covenant that one should love one’s family?  In the film Love U Family, written and produced by Vipul Devani and helmed by Sachindra Sharma, the makers have gone to great lengths to depict the natural ties of a family —  and its binding and affinities.

The Dewanis are a happy, close-knit family consisting of Dhiren (Manoj Joshi), his wife Sugandha (Navni Parihar), daughter Khushi (Aksha Pardasany) and a son, daughter-in-law and their young son. Happy and close-knit they were till Raj (Salman Yusuff Khan of Dance India Dance fame) sweeps her off her feet (well, in a couple of scenes, literally).

A bit of drama is played out when the out-of-work Raj convinces Khushi to marry him and whisks the newly-wed Gujju vegetarian bride to his sneering and domineering mother and sisters. The plot is a bit predictable from thereon till Khushi decides one day that enough is enough.  How Khushi overcomes her marital problems and manages to get united with her family forms the crux of the story.

The beginning of the film, shot in the picturesque city of Almaty, the former capital of Kazakhstan, provides a few clues to the ultimate fate of Khushi and the family’s bonding. Aksha Pardasany looks beautiful but the chemistry between her and Salman Y. Khan is absent: she requires an actor with a stronger screen presence.  Theatre and screen veteran Manoj Joshi and Navni Parihar are adequate while Shakti Kapoor (as Lovely Singh) and Devang Rawal as ‘Motabhai’ Dhiren Dewani’s younger brother play themselves well in their cameos.

Though ‘Naughty Naughty Party’ would appeal to the college-going crowd, at least four of the seven songs are dispensable and the film’s length could have been curtailed to a more judicious 120 minutes. A commendable and sincere effort to propagate and inculcate family values, though, in all honesty falls short.