Tu Meri Main Tera Main Tera Tu Meri review: Kartik Aaryan and Ananya Panday lead tedious, circular drama that confuses red flags and manipulation for ‘green flag’ romance

Tu Meri Main Tera Main Tera Tu Meri recycles DDLJ tropes with a toxic "green flag" hero. Marred by predictable writing and derivative acting, it’s a repetitive mess that lacks real depth or heart.

Kartik Aaryan and Ananya Panday in a still from Tu Meri Main Tera Main Tera Tu Meri

Tu Meri Main Tera Main Tera Tu Meri story:

A romantic comedy-drama, Tu Meri Main Tera Main Tera Tu Meri examines how Gen Z's "hook-up culture" and classic Bollywood romance from the 1990s intersect with one another. A carefree wedding planner from Los Angeles named Ray (Kartik Aaryan) and a fiery romance novelist from Agra named Rumi (Ananya Panday) meet and fall in love while on a solo holiday in the picturesque surroundings of Croatia. Reality sets in, and their romance hits a snag: Rumi won't leave her widowed father (Jackie Shroff) alone in India, and Ray's single mother (Neena Gupta) refuses to accept an "Indian bahu". The film explores the question of whether contemporary love can flourish within the confines of traditional norms as the couple negotiates these competing cultural expectations and familial allegiances.

Tu Meri Main Tera Main Tera Tu Meri review:

There's a scene in Dabangg where Sonakshi Sinha's character, Rajjo, adamantly tells Salman Khan's Chulbul Pandey that she will never marry anyone until her father (Mahesh Manjrekar) is alive. In this scene, Pandey tells Rajjo that her father must die for them to be together, and she immediately corrects him by stating that she will not marry anyone until her father is alive. Eventually, Manjrekar's character dies by suicide following a taunt from Pandey. However, we can save that discussion for another day. The point is, the same dialogue is said by Ananya Panday's Rumi to Kartik Aaryan's Ray, but it sounded more heartless because she says she can't leave her father until he dies. Despite their different social strata, we observe the treatment of the characters' differing thoughts, regardless of their intent.

We say that Gen Z is quite practical and believes that giving your heart to someone in the hook-up era is an entirely different experience. In Tu Meri Main Tera Main Tera Tu Meri we see a borderline Gen-Z girl and a millennial man discussing this generation like they have done PhDs on it. For the past three decades, starting with the release of Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, there has been a shift in the way romantic films are made, incorporating Shakespearean hurdles like those in Romeo & Juliet. We see men preferring not to elope and start a new life on a bad note. Rather, it’s winning hearts until the end or just eventually giving up.

ALSO READ: Tu Meri Main Tera Main Tera Tu Meri OTT partner revealed! Here's when and where you can stream Kartik Aaryan & Ananya Panday's rom-com after its theatrical run

The basic plot of Tu Meri Main Tera Main Tera, Tu Meri—I can’t keep on writing the full name—involves an annoying young man named Ray who travels solo to Croatia for yacht week; he accidentally meets Rumi at the Delhi airport, where their journey together begins. From sitting adjacent to each other on the flight to sharing a cabin aboard a yacht for an entire week, it becomes evident that they develop a connection, as such encounters often lead to romantic involvement, ultimately culminating in love. The hurdle, as Rumi describes it, is a parental conflict in which her father is entirely dependent on his two daughters, even for tasks as simple as switching on the geyser. Thus, when she gets to know her elder sister, Jiya (Chandni Bhabhda), has fallen in love with a guy and plans to move to Canada after the wedding, Rumi decides to give up on her love for Ray because she cannot leave her widowed father alone in India.

The first half ends there, and of course, you know where the plot goes because you have seen, loved, and cried after watching Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge 100 times. The current template is so predictable and simplistic that I don’t understand why we are so determined to demonstrate that such formulas exist and can be manipulated for future generations. First of all, we saw Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol’s characters falling in love eventually but not expressing it during their month-long Eurorail journey. Here, Rumi and Ray spend barely a week together, declaring their love for each other, only to part ways and return later.

The film has a beautiful appearance, and the clothes are well-chosen, yet despite this glossiness, it only presents a surface that lacks depth for the purpose of storytelling. Karan Shrikant Sharma, who wrote the screenplay for the film, was directed by Sameer Vidwans, whose previous directorial, Satyaprem Ki Katha had a certain depth, so to speak. First of all, why in a Karan Johar-produced film do women wear expensive clothes so that there’s no space for the audience to feel that she is middle class? A struggling writer, whose book got poor reviews, lives in a broken palatial home in Agra. However, her outfits suggest otherwise; they indicate that she is a princess from Call Me Bae who is struggling despite her influential family background.

I am just listing the problems in the film, because that’s all I could see from the beginning until the end. We see popular Bollywood dialogue and songs woven into pop culture, because being filmy is what makes girls go weak in their knees, right? The film continuously shows Ray manipulating and gaslighting Rumi so they can get together; her response has been a constant "no." The film negates constants by having her firmly insist that he not create any conflicts. The film would have been slightly more meaningful if it had ended at that point.

However, it is essential that Ray seize the opportunity and focus entirely on himself, as he cannot afford to fail. And it so happens that although he mansplains and also says “feminist ka jhanda leherana” to receive a reaction from Rumi, he objects when he witnesses patriarchy unfolding in front of him.

In one of the scenes, for an effect, he says that he is a green flag, to which Rumi replies that her father sees green as an enemy. You won’t believe Ray’s response! He says that he will wear an orange jacket then. SMH!

Moreover, talking about performances, how have both actors lost their individuality in a film that literally didn’t need them to embody someone else? At one point, I actually felt that Kartik Aaryan was just walking and talking like Ranbir Kapoor in Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani and Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar. Did Ananya watch Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani for the preparation of this character?

When we criticise films like Baghban for portraying parents as oblivious to the fact that children do not owe them anything, we find ourselves watching films where a man openly declares that he is a mama's boy and that his mother is his first love. We have a proposal scene where we see the man proposing to the woman he loves by saying, “Will you marry me and my mom?” How is this romantic or an aww-moment? I will never understand. To be honest, I don’t want to.

The film calls out male ego, mansplaining, gaslighting, and non-consensual acts, but everything goes kaput because the hero has to win in the end, even if a girl’s opinion has to go unheard.

Tu Meri Main Tera Main Tera Tu Meri verdict:

Tu Meri Main Tera Main Tera Tu Meri is as repetitive as its title, offering a glossy but hollow bridge between 90s nostalgia and Gen Z culture. While it captures the beauty of Croatia, it fails to capture the depth of a real relationship. The film’s "green flag" hero is frequently bogged down by manipulative behavior, making the central romance feel more like a forced transaction than a heartfelt connection.

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