I seriously think that certain filmmakers love going eccentric (with a capital E’ and eight more letters, in Bold, Italic fonts). 

And when an average success like Raanjhanaa (cost of production Rs. 30 crore, India net biz Rs. 60 crore and overseas gross Rs. 10 crore, which approximately means Rs. 8 crore net, that is a total collection of Rs. 68 crore) is erroneously (or calculatedly) declared a ‘hit’, things go haywire with a director (Aanand L. Rai, for whom inconsistency has become a consistent middle name!). 

We all are aware that his decent if over-melodramatic ‘non-dark’ drama, Raksha Bandhan (2022) came a cropper. For him, this was the (hugely) wrong lesson—that positive, healthy entertainment is meant to capsize, at least in his hands! And his only great work—the Tanu Weds Manu franchise—is what he must be now considering his fluke!! Whatever…

Tere Ishk Mein has been termed a “spiritual” successor to Raanjhanaa and Atrangi Re (released on OTT towards the end of the pandemic) and if the former was messy while attempting to be a massy mix of premand politics, the latter fully lived up to its title! And now, especially in this post-pandemic era, movies like KGF2 (an orgasmic essay on violence), Saiyaara and Ek Deewane Ki Deewaniyat find public endorsement. 

The negative charge flourishes.

The first half of TIM is wonky but admittedly entertaining. A college Psychology student, Multi (Kriti Sanon)—the name is supposed to be symbolic for ‘salvation’ if you please! —writes a 2,200-word thesis to complete her degree/doctorate. This postulates that however violent a person is, he or she can be cured by the right approach. When her superiors (Chittaranjan Tripathy and Jaya Bhattacharya, both of whom behave as if they need counselling themselves), are skeptical, she finds by default a guinea-pig for her para-medical experiment there and then. How?

Shankar (Dhanush), again a name that is supposed to be symbolic of the krodh within him, barges into the college auditorium where her presentation is going on, preceded by the man he is chasing to pulverize! She decides to face Shankar, and for this young student, it is love at first touch—he grips her hand!

After you have let your better senses go for a sabbatical, he accepts the challenge that she can cure him. He is from a poor family, his mother had died saving him from a fire, and Shankar declares that he is ‘burning within in every pore of his body’ (not exact translation, but you get the point?).

He keeps declaring he is love with her, and she consistently reminds him that she is only involved professionally. This even goes to the extent of her giving him license to sleep with her when he gets fed up of all the moral science lessons and tells her he wants to have ‘fun’ in life. Professional involvement, see? As per ‘writers’ Himanshu Sharma and Neeraj Yadav! Sharma also, let me remind you, perpetrated Atrangi Reand Raanjhana on us!

Soon, a time comes for Mukti ma’am to come out in the open. A post-graduate now, she still becomes incoherent when she visits Shankar’s tenement to actually tell him she is not in love. For some crazier reason, she calls him to her home and Shankar feels that it is the real McCoy. But when he does go there, Mukti’s father (Tota Roy Chowdhury hamming in a total role-reversal from his delightful turn in Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani) snubs and insults him, challenging him to even reach the stage when he is selected for the UPSC (Union Public Service Commission, the government agency that recruits officers for Civil Services through various standardized but rigorous examinations where the selected candidate is usually just one among 10,000 applicants!)

Mukti rebukes her dad but cannot do anything more when she should have used her medical talents first on this nasty man. Shankar storms off and applies for UPSC and slogs like a dog. Mukti get wed to her childhood sweetheart (Paramvir Cheema) and a defiant Shankar comes to chastise her, as he has just lost his father in an accident for which Mukti is in a way responsible (convoluted story there, so let me not waste space and the reader’s time here!).

2025’s writers Salim-Javed…Oops!…Sharma-Yadav now hit on an amazing coincidence: Mukti is assigned as chief counsellor to—believe it or nuts!—our Armed Forces (luckily this is fiction, not fact, in real life!) and Shankar has passed exams and become the Indian Air Force’s ace pilot, whose fire and frustration are intact, far from cured, and have taken the form of being a rebellious IAF pilot who never follows his superiors’ instructions.

He is suspended, war is imminent, and his boss (Vineet Kumar, nuanced performance) wants his ace flyer back with a medical certificate to affirm Shankar’s fitness. Now all this is happening in Leh Ladakh, and the only authority who can deem him fit is a heavily pregnant Mukti! Mukti, who vomits blood like a tap, is suffering from liver cirrhosis, though she smokes more than she drinks. 

So what happens next? Do they fall in love when they meet now? And the big Q that haunts us during the unequivocally-torturous last 40 minutes: is she finally married or not? Is the child to come legitimate? How will the child be if she has been drinking presumably like a fish and smoking like a chimney even in pregnancy? Will Shankar’s fire be extinguished and will his mission for the nation make him a normal human being? And will Mukti attain mukti?

The Sharma-Rai combo is known to brutally play with medical science, doctors and psychologists, the way a temperamental toddler loves to deliberately break toys he is given. This was shown decidedly in Atrangi Reand, as described above, goes to singular heights here! This is also akin to the total mockery we saw recently in Saiyaara of an ailment as serious as Alzheimer’s Disease. But to be fair, at least Saiyaara as well as KGF 2 had positive messages in the end!

All that Tere Ishk Mein has for us is a colossal negative message: for Shankar, it is (unrequited) love being more important than the nation. For Mukti, it is confusion, misplaced guilt, smoking and drinking that get priority over husband, a child, herself, her health and career and common-sense.

For Rai and his writers, it is a nonsensical, needlessly dark and addle-pated sequel in the hope that the cash registers ring. Rahman dishes out his usual recent non-memorable trivial tunes while his BGM remains passable, and lyricist Irshad Kamil has to play to the Rai-Rahman gallery.

If I could sit through this tripe, it was because of Dhanush acing his completely untamed character with a wild and likeably irreverent nonchalance, and Kriti Sanon doing equally well in her messy essay. Prakash Raj as Dhanush’s father, Priyanshu Painyuli as his brother and Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub in a cameo are good. Coming to Ayyub, along with Dhanush and Rahman, the Rai and Sharma clique must be thinking of them as lucky mascots, for Ayyub really has nothing relevant to do here. Paramvir Cheema is sweet.

The technical values are good and along with Dhanush, Kriti and Vineet, made this 169-minute mad-athon just about bearable for me. Three-fourths of my rating below is for these three!

Rating: ** (Amost!)

T-Series Films’ & Colour Yellow Productions’ Tere Ishk Mein Produced by: Aanand L. Rai, Himanshu Sharma, Bhushan Kumar & Krishan Kumar Directed by: Aanand L. Rai Written by: Himanshu Sharma & Neeraj Yadav Music: A.R. Rahman Starring: Dhanush, Kriti Sanon, Prakash Raj, Vineet Kumar, Jaya Bhattacharya, Tota Roy Chowdhury, Priyanshi Painyuli, Chittaranjan Tripathy, Paramvir Cheema & others

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