Mili snaps a selfie in front of the palace.

When bubbly physiotherapist Mili Chakravarty (played by Sonam Kapoor) enters the lives of a stifling royal family, expect an explosion of personalities. She's fun loving, dressed over the top and doesn't hesitate to speak her mind. The gloomy Rathores, by contrast, are just so -- there's wheelchair-bound father Shekhar Singh Rathore (Aamir Raza Hussain), shrill disciplinarian mother Urmila Devi Rathore (Ratna Pathak Shah) who lives by the clock, a sauve, handsome and workaholic son Yuvraj Vikram Singh Rathore (Fawad Khan) and a daughter with unrealised dreams.

Enter Mili. She's come to the oppressive household as physiotherapist to the father who is unable to walk and has already dismissed 40 doctors before her. Of course she is barely tolerated by the rani, who makes no bones about her dislike for this upstart who is breaking the rules all the time--messing about with her food at dinner, putting her foot in her mouth all the time and generally trying to have as good a time as she can in her new assignment.

Predictably the young Rathore (Fawad Khan, the heartthrob of popular Pakistani serial “Zindagi Gulzar Hai”), who is already engaged, and Mili develop a mutual attraction. Things come to a head when they are closely thrown against each other on several occasions. Soon the two are in a crackling relationship which the prince refuses to acknowledge.

Meanwhile, thanks to Mili the senior Rathore improves dramatically even while the rani remains obdurate. Naturally as every fairy tale, there comes a happy ending.

Even if the storyline is predictable and some of the characters overdone, “Khoobsurat” has much to recommend it, not the least the fine acting of Fawad Khan, its lightness and the nostalgic return to the days of sprawling palaces, handsome princes and princesses. And of course there's Mili's archetypal Punjabi mother Manju played by the redoubtable Kirron Kher, who excels in such roles.

“Khoobsurat” is loosely based on the late, renowned director Hrishikesh Mukherjee's 1980 hit film “Khubsoorat”. Then it was Rekha who shook up a middle class household presided over by martinet matriarch Dina Pathak (coincidentally Ratna Pathak Shah's mother). Does Sonam Kapoor match up to Rekha? Not quite, but she's in the reckoning.