Tu Meri Main Tera Main Teri... Review: Kartik Aaryan, Ananya Panday Bore in Love

We have to talk about the title. Who approved it? Who thought it was cute? Most importantly, who is going to remember it? Was simply Tu Meri Main Tera unavailable?

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

We have to talk about the title. Who approved it? Who thought it was cute? Most importantly, who is going to remember it? Was simply Tu Meri Main Tera unavailable?

Unfortunately, an unwieldy title is the least of this film’s problems. Marathi filmmaker Sameer Vidwans’s second Hindi movie—after the well-intentioned but misguided Satyaprem Ki Katha—is a self-confessed throwback to the rom-coms of the 2000s.

Think Saif Ali Khan, Rani Mukerji, Preity Zinta; think beautiful foreign locations and indulgent parent characters; think Hum Tum, Salaam Namaste, Ta Ra Rum Pum. And Vidwans and writer Karan Shrikant Sharma, who also wrote Satyaprem, pepper their film with references to these and other films of similar vintage.

A Film Packed with Throwbacks

There’s of course DDLJ’s tried-and-tested palat moment. We get the ‘sach aur saahas’ dialogue from Lagaan. Even some of the jokes are along the same lines as in previous films. Ray/Rehaan (Kartik Aaryan) tells Rumi (Ananya Panday) that Shobha is a boring name, only to learn it was her mum’s name, just as how in Hum Tum, Saif Ali Khan told Rani Mukerji that he was glad she wasn’t the kind of woman who drank tea, only to learn that her mother was a tea drinker.

And then there is the music. Vishal and Sheykhar serve up a ho-hum soundtrack—‘Hum Dono’ and ‘Mudh Ja Raahiye’ are minor standouts—and Hitesh Sonik runs with some of the song themes in the background score (the strains of ‘Hum Dono’ are well used).

But the film is animated by a slew of older Hindi film songs, repurposed quite fittingly.

We open with ‘Raat Akeli Hai’ from Jewel Thief, but quickly more recent songs appear. The presence of veteran actors like Neena Gupta (as Ray’s mum) and Jackie Shroff (as Rumi’s dad) meant I was expecting some meta referencing—no surprise, then, that they do a jig to ‘Choli Ke Peechhe’ from Khal Nayak, a film they both starred in. There’s also a medley of old hits, sung at the wedding of Rumi’s sister Jia (Instagram mimicry artist Chandni Bhabhda making a memorable debut).

And the film’s best recreation of an old song—indeed possibly its single most successful romantic moment—is ‘Saat Samundar Paar’ from Vishwatma. But even the moment when it is sung is a direct reference to the reunion of Raj and Simran in DDLJ—including the use of a string instrument to attract the heroine’s attention.

An Uninventive Screenplay

I’ve spent the last few paragraphs talking about this film’s references to previous works and my point is that Tu Meri Main Tera Main Tera Tu Meri wouldn’t exist without its references. This in itself is not an issue (can you imagine Main Hoon Na or Om Shanti Om or Ae Dil Hai Mushkil without their references?), but this film is not very inventive or clever on its own.

Consider, for instance, that at one point late in the film, in what has become the Hindi film industry’s most tired current meta joke, Ray disparages nepo babies and describes himself as having ‘come up the hard way’. Ray is a wedding planner who works in his mum’s business and lives in her house. Make it make sense, Ray!

Early in the film, Ray’s mum makes him promise (pinky promise—and guess what? Her name is Pinky!) that he will marry a non-Indian. Now this is a ripe set-up, since we know we are in a rom-com where the heroine is played by the Indian Ananya Panday—but it is simply tossed off without any payoff.

An Inconsistent Tone

And Vidwans often struggles to maintain a tone. In one scene, Ray and Rumi are making out in a beautiful lagoon (they meet on a 10-day holiday in Croatia, where they traverse the enemies-to-lovers pipeline faster than you can say…DDLJ). Then Rumi gets stung by a jellyfish and the making out makes way for cringe comedy as Ray debates whether to pee on the wound or not. And then we suddenly settle down for a heart-to-heart in which Ray lobs our way not one but two sentimental lines: ‘apno aur sapno kay beech, jeet humesha apno ki honi chaahiye’ and ‘jo mard apni pasandeeda aurat kay liye qubaani na de, vo mard mard naheen’.

Serious moments are punctured by in-your-face humour; comic moments swivel dangerously fast towards mawkish melodrama. Just watch the harebrained scene that follows ‘Choli Ke Peechhe’, in which many drunken things are said before everybody suddenly sobers up and berates each other for the drunken declarations.

A Haywire Second Half

And if we coast along through the first half—deciding to ignore Aaryan’s desperately unfunny mugging and focus on Panday’s confident, pleasant turn—then the lengthy second half weighs itself down with nine new characters, including the horny wife of an astrologer, who loses no opportunity to letch at Ray. I rolled my eyes.

The plotting goes haywire. There are some cheap tricks to break up a perfectly good wedding. Ray appears able to do all kinds of things overnight, including buying a new company, hiring new staff and finding dirt on people. Rumi appears unable to sit down and have a level-headed conversation with anyone.

The word qurbaani appears far too many times. Old, boring narrative shortcuts are taken (this was an issue with Satyaprem Ki Katha too), particularly a gratuitous hospital stint. The film’s finish is conceptually enjoyable, but rushed and needlessly soppy.

A few enjoyable songs and stray moments of genuine surprise (such as when we see that Ray’s tripartite laugh comes from his mum) don’t do much to save Tu Meri Main Tera Main Tera Tu Meri from its destiny to be forgotten. That title lasts longer.

(Sahir Avik D'souza is a writer based in Mumbai. His work has been published by Film Companion, TimeOut, The Indian Express, and EPW. He is an editorial assistant at Marg magazine.)