Bollywood romance: A grand nostalgic comeback or much-needed reinvention?

What do much talked about July releases like Metro In Dino, Aap Jaisa Koi and Saiyaara say about the lost soul of Bollywood romance? Let’s find out!

It’s strange how, as the world turned more intellectual and philosophical, especially about love, we tried so hard to dissect and understand the feeling, that the feeling itself started to disappear from cinema. That one emotion that used to define our lives, that taught us what it meant to fall in love, where SRK lived on forever with his palat, palat, palat or aur paas, aur paas, somehow got lost along the way.

Whether two people dancing on snow-capped mountains ever made "practical" sense is up for debate, but the joy of watching them fall in love? That’s something we still long for. Even now, the demand for a good rom-com or romantic drama is at an all-time high. It’s not that films like that weren’t made especially after the pandemic as Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani gave us a taste of old-school Bollywood romance but it had heart, soul, and today’s voice, it also felt like a classroom lesson on love, more than a rom-com that makes you feel giddy and alive.

Hence by the start of this year, that craving had turned into a collective complaint. People were practically begging for a good romance. The re-releases of Laila Majnu and Sanam Teri Kasam proved that we’ll show up for love stories in numbers, if only someone would make them the way they were supposed to be made. But then came Nadaaniyaan and Loveyapa, and the disappointment hit harder. Both films pretended to understand the younger generation’s idea of love and ended up delivering stories so shallow and miscast that they got trolled more than watched.

Still, not all hope was lost. July, of all months, brought with it something unexpected. The rains, a season that Bollywood has always romanticized, was suddenly filled with releases centered on love. And that raised the big question - could these films finally fill the gap we’ve been feeling? Metro In Dino helped answer that. It wasn’t a perfect film and definitely not Life in a Metro, which it was constantly compared to, but it reminded us what romance could feel like again onscreen. With its musical soul and real-world complications, it captured that bittersweet blend of old charm and modern messiness. 

Also Read: Materialists and Metro In Dino: Two films look at modern romance embedded in labels, longing, and love-ships!

I had always tussled with the idea that were the films bad all along, or were we just unable to accept how love has evolved in today’s times? Somehow that was made clearer with this film - the issue isn’t that  earlier, films didn’t understand today’s relationships, it’s that they didn’t approach them with empathy; they became desperate to work around the expectations of the audience. It’s not that romance has changed its course; people have changed. We still want to fall madly in love but just don’t want to lose ourselves in the process. Today, we value our needs, our self-worth, and that makes us more cautious. But in doing that, we've also created an ideal version of love in our heads that no reality can ever live upto it. The constant tug-of-war between what we dream of and what we actually have is what’s made romance feel so much more complicated. Metro In Dino tapped into that. It reminded us that despite all the talk of red flags and green flags, love is still about falling, for someone, sometimes again and again. And it showed that beautifully, across ages and phases of life.

Of course, not every film got it right. There were still half-baked, pretentious ones like Aankhon Ki Gustaakhiyan, which had intention but none of the emotional weight. But Aap Jaisa Koi sparked real debate. Walking on similar lines of lesson in love like Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani, it tackled the difference between saying we’re progressive and acting like it. The film questioned what “equality in love” really means, where being a modern woman is only accepted as long as she stays within invisible limits. It wasn’t perfect either, but it hit a nerve. It showed how, behind the mask of acceptance, a lot of men still hold on to regressive ideas. The film’s “happy ending” also reignited the conversation about whether women in such stories are just “settling” and maybe that’s where Metro In Dino can offer some perspective as it argued that people can change, and if someone owns their mistake, maybe they do deserve a second chance. Interestingly, both films featured Fatima Sana Shaikh, dealing with flawed men and deciding whether to stay or walk away. 

Both films also coincided in another matter - showcasing extra-marital affairs. But while Metro In Dino used it as a moment of rediscovery for a couple (Konkona and Pankaj Tripathi), Aap Jaisa Koi explored a woman’s journey from being invisible to finally being seen. Yet it can be said that neither film handled it with as much nuance as Do Aur Do Pyaar, which is why when many accused the films to justify this in the name of romance, there is not much to defend, especially for Metro In Dino which treats the sensitive idea itself as a joke!

Just when we thought we’d seen a new age of romance and all that it could offer, Saiyaara arrived and surprised everyone. A simple love story between a hot-headed angry guy and a doe-eyed dreamy girl, torn apart not by a third person but by fate in the form of early-onset Alzheimer’s. It's nothing we haven’t seen before but maybe that’s what made it so refreshing. It didn’t need to be groundbreaking or a masterpiece. It just needed to make us feel again, which it effectively does. The film didn’t aim for viral reactions, though it got them anyway. Some cried, some rolled their eyes, and some accused it of being over hyped. Even if you didn’t bawl your eyes out, even if you just felt a lump in your throat, that's more than what most films of this genre have been able to do off late.

Touted as Aashiqui 2 for Gen Z, Saiyaara gave us what we were missing or didn’t even know we were craving - that all-consuming, devastating love. And despite being predictable, it did something different. It didn’t kill off its leads. It gave them a hopeful ending where Krish (Ahaan Panday) chooses to love Vaani (Aneet Padda) even after knowing that she might forget him someday. That’s the kind of tragedy we still fall for. The backlash that followed from accusations of paid reviews, mocking those who liked it, says more about us than the film. It exposed just how deep classism runs in our taste-making circles. Just because you didn’t get the appeal doesn’t mean it’s fake.

But all of this only proves one thing - Bollywood romance is back, not in the same problematic way but with new emotions, a new lens and stories that actually put in effort. The drama is on an all time high, the music is original and yet it’s the story that matters again. These films remind us that we don’t need to remake classics or re-release old hits, we just need to bring back that feeling of good old Bollywood romance. We need to tell love stories that are honest, messy, complicated, heartfelt because the feeling of falling in love can still overpower everything else and it probably always will. 

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