First things first: Parineeti Chopra plays a character that is probably the first highly functional, highly intelligent sociopath and scientist in the history of Hindi film. She’s an inventor. Yes, she has a PhD.
The rest of this romantic dramedy is a love triangle with generous helpings of family drama. This may also be the first time that Nikhil (Sidharth Malhotra), the boy, falls in love at first sight with Meeta, a very, very nerdy-looking girl (Parineeti Chopra in an ill-fitting t-shirt, jeans, glasses and sporting a ‘boy cut’) escaping from a family wedding. But once she escapes and the boy returns to the wedding, he falls head-over-heels for Karishma, an aspiring actor/model (played by Adah Sharma, wearing the finest of wedding clothes) who we later find out is Meeta’s sister. That’s the first act. The rest of the movie is set seven years later, when Meeta returns (the boy’s still in a relationship with the not-nerdy girl, who turns into a successful actor). But she’s back as a long-haired, cute and goofy jhalla. Why? Why not retain that incredible sharpness and the nerd quotient?
Coming to the Bechdel Test: it has plenty of named female characters, and quite a few, even if brief, conversations between women which are not about men – one of which is entirely in Chinese. Hasee Toh Phasee passes. (Note: The movie also reclaims the title Drama Queen in an item song at the end of the movie from the clutches of negative connotation.)