U/A: Drama, romance
Dir: Aanand L Rai
Cast: Dhanush, Kriti Sanon
Rating: 2/5
Tere Ishk Mein is a Tamil-Hindi bilingual. And I don’t mean this just in terms of its simultaneous release in the two languages. But also, the idiom/grammar of it, attempting to merge sensibilities of a Kollywood and Bollywood commercial cinema.
Starting with the Tamil superstar, Dhanush, opposite Kriti Sanon, from up North, over a mainstream romance, with the hero, originally from Chennai, who’s settled
in Delhi.
You can sense the math behind this movie, hence. Now, simply the chemistry must match its geography.
To that extent, you might find Dhanush, in the early scenes, as very much a younger Rajinikanth — with his sly smile, hairdo, subtle swag with every mannerism; even flicking his matchsticks to light up cigarettes from his boot, if not the heroine’s sweater.
The heroine, on the other hand, is an independent thinker still; PhD student in psychology, with a modern outlook towards love/sex, while I suspect she’s been wasting her ciggies, pretending to smoke!
The cinematographer (Tushar Kanti Ray) lights her up well, between the five/six finely stocked expressions.
The leading man is the ruffian — the guy of the streets, deliberately unkempt, prone to scuffle, but with a band of boys behind him in college.
Clearly, the hero-heroine are a class apart. In the sense that they evidently belong to different socio-economic strata, first.
Thus, begins the classic working-class hero’s journey. Something that mainstream cinema, down South, thoroughly thrives on. And one barely gets to see much of, or any of it, in contemporary Hindi pictures.
Is this a retelling of the ancient trope: ‘rich girl meets poor boy’? In a way, yes. And with an eye also on the front-benches of Tamil Nadu, and Hindi heartland. Consider the ‘ladki ka khadoos baap’ (heroine’s badass dad) for a Bollywood baddie.
This bloke lives in a Lutyens’ bungalow the size and security reserved for a top cabinet minister in New Delhi— self-admittedly commanding “700 IPS officers”, plus
god knows, and I forget, how many district magistrates across India!
As per his nameplate, he’s an IAS officer of the rank of joint secretary, for heaven’s sake!
Anybody with rudimentary knowledge of bureaucracy will know the filmmakers are clueless about how it works. Am I seriously fact-checking a dard-bhari, popish potboiler, FFS?
Well, yes, but perhaps only because the filmmakers go on to send the hero off to study for the UPSC exam, and aim for the IAS himself!
He might be wildly disappointed by the reality of what’s ahead, even if he clears that tough test (just letting him know)! He’s a Delhi University student, president of
the union, no less. He recalls the UPSC as CBSE to his dad.
This boy’s notary-lawyer father (Prakash Raj) —groveling before the girl’s IAS papa, who only speaks in terms of “tum jaise log, hum jaise log” (poor and rich people) — begs on his knees to the privileged patriarch.
He’s forced to touch the feet of all house-helps, apologising for his downtrodden son, having fallen for the daughter of the bungalow! Natively, I understand this
big-screen sentiment from the ’80s/’90s.
Which is true for much of the film itself, with a touch of other hits, Kabir Singh (2019), 12th Fail (2023); why, even a nod to Manmarziyaan (2018), if you may, that was produced by Aanand L Rai himself.
Rai (Raksha Bandhan,Zero) has directed this film, written by long-time associate, Himanshu Sharma. The picture’s opening argument could well be that male violence is basically an outcome of incel culture — lack of female attention/love/care.
I kinda agree with that thought, although how it’s made is probably besides the point!
The heroine decides to reform the juvenile delinquent hero, who becomes an Indian Air Force (IAF) fighter pilot, eventually (film’s solid opening sequence) — while this guy should have access to no sharp objects, whether inside or outside of a plane, for the rest of his life.
The IAF setting, shot here like a dream, somehow reminded me of Mani Ratnam’s Kaatru Veliyidai (2017), similarly about a fighter pilot (Karthi), with severe anger management issues. But that was one heck of a pointless, misogynist movie!
Essentially, this is an oldworld operatic melodrama about unrequited love. Because no matter what, and however hard the slightly deranged Dhanush tries, he simply can’t get the slim, fair-skinned Sonam (Raanjhanaa), or Kriti Sanon onscreen now, can he?
He can get the Tamil audiences, alright — although I prefer him more in gritty, equally grand set-ups, with greater realism (Vetrimaaran’s Vada Chennai). Sure, a movie is a mirror to society — must the image be so corny?
As it is, most melodramas, scripted well until interval, flip so badly after that set-up, that the second half is usually hard to sit through. Well, I did sit through this one.
You go in for Dhanush, ideally, but stay for the music. This is an AR Rahman musical, after all. On the first hearing, frankly, none of the songs stick. Their picturisations do, besides Rai’s sense of scale, of course.
Take that scene, where the film reveals the shanty, where the hero and his family live, followed by a full-on, fun Tamil track in a Hindi film. Or the other song, juxtaposed between a wedding and a funeral.
There are a few such gems. I actually wish this film well in theatres. It’d be such a waste of time/money to watch it alone.