Despite having many opportunities, Phillauri isn't able to make full use of them, feels Sukanya Verma.

In my encounters of ghosts on screen, I’ve known quite a variety -- fierce, horrific, gloomy, even goofy -- but Phillauri’s well-behaved apparition is a first. 

She glows incandescently in the dark and floats through space in shimmering, translucent attire, like a wish-fulfilling fairy stumbling out of the pages of an exquisitely illustrated children’s storybook. She speaks softly while her eyes glisten in wonderment. 

Where most other spirits would wreak havoc on learning some random NRI chap tied a knot to the tree she inhabits and promptly chopped it off as well, Shashi, serene, shiny Shashi (Anushka Sharma), is amused over how such a juvenile deed, fuelled by his family’s superstitious beliefs and baseless ‘Aishwarya (Rai Bachchan) also did it’ logic can ward off an astrological complication.   

Before Kanan (Suraj Sharma), the waffling, weed-puffing nitwit who’s flown down to Amritsar from Canada to wed his high school sweetheart (Mehreen Peerzada), winces at Shashi’s lustrous albeit harmless presence, Anshai Lal’s directorial debut Phillauri sets itself up as a typical big fat Punjabi wedding romp around understated idiosyncrasies. 

Grumpy moms, nonchalant dads, rum-guzzling grandmothers, squeamish house help and a bride who’s understandably concerned about her to-be significant other’s perennial sulking -- Lal tosses in a fair bit of quirk. 

There is an indie-like normalcy wearing their interactions and zingers till a sense of monotony sets in.

Lal’s insistence to maintain room temperature humour and downplay a frothy premise robs Phillauri of fizz in its comedy.