Tere Ishk Mein movie review: In the 2013 film Raanjhana, Dhanush played a Hindu lad from Varanasi who falls in love with a Muslim girl. That was a time when filmmakers could still — just about — carry off an inter-religious love story without the moral police threatening to burn theatres down.
In 2025, Aanand L Rai and writers Himanshu Yadav and Neeraj Yadav return with Raanjhana’s spiritual sequel, and this time around it isn’t religion but class—rich girl, poor boy—which becomes the point of conflict. And just in case that isn’t enough, the writers throw the entire kitchen sink at us – college love story, parental opposition, patriotic flag waving, even a war — in a film which ends up being a totally outdated, confused, heavy-on-melodrama-and-glycerine mish-mash of genres.
Even in 2013, Dhanush’s character’s slitting-his-wrists in his pyaar-ka-paagalpan being papered over by belated calming was a problem. In 2025, so many elements in the film are problematic at so many levels, starting with a ‘hero’ whose uncontrollable temper can’t be in all honesty explained away by his mother-less childhood, with a perfectly supportive father (Prakash Raj) at his back. Dousing PhD scholar Mukti’s (Kriti Sanon) potential boyfriends with petrol, and fire-bombing her IAS father’s (Tota Roy Chowdhury) house isn’t intensity, it’s just toxicity, and what can one say of Mukti’s slipping down the path of alcoholic misery? It’s damaging to the whole idea of a female lead being able to stick to her point of view: refusing to be cowed by a guy who ‘can’t handle rejection’ looked as if it was an initial choice, and then the plot gives up on her. Improbable much? And what is Mohammad Zeeshan Ayyub doing here, in a walk- on part which adds nothing to the film?
Dhanush is a terrific actor, and the way he goes all in with the bashing and slapping and thrashing — throwing in a ghastly crass comment at Mukti’s professors about sexual availability for good measure — does take you in when he is at it. But his character is nothing but the reddest of all red flags I’ve seen in a while: it’s unbelievable that a contemporary film will try and shove down our throats that most toxic of male tropes — what the male lover wants, the male lover will get — whether he is the nikamma, roaming around with best friend Ved (Priyanshu Painyuli) in the first half, or the bravest pilot that the Indian air force has, ignoring his commanding officer’s (Vineet Kumar Singh) orders to show his bravery.
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