Aap Jaisa Koi review: A rom-com that sets out to expose pretentious progressiveness but ends up feeling pretentious itself!

Dharmatic Entertainment’s fun and quirky rom-com tries to be the next Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani, but ends up stuck between being goofy and sincere.

Back in 2023, at the wave of high-octane action films and #Barbenheimer, Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani arrived with a refreshing lens on love stories, one that felt in tune with the times. It gave us a tale where two completely opposite people falling in love didn’t just change each other, but also nudged society to do some introspection. But to believe that cinema alone can spark a revolution is to live in denial. In that sense, Aap Jaisa Koi, fashioned after RARKPK, tries to explore how we often pretend to be progressive because the times demand it, even if real change is still far off. But unlike its predecessor, it gets stuck between being a cinematic rom-com and a piece of social commentary, never quite managing to bring the two together.

The film follows the familiar beats of a rom-com where opposites attract to highlight the duality of the world we live in. So we get 42-year-old Sanskrit teacher Srirenu (R Madhavan), who meets a saree-clad Bengali girl Madhu Bose (Fatima Sana Shaikh), a French teacher at a university. She’s written like a cute-hot male fantasy in the Madhubala mold, someone who finds Ashok Kumar hot, making her a perfect match for Srirenu, a sweet virgin shaped by a traditionalist, old-school upbringing. If he plays the sitar, she plays the piano and their jugalbandi is supposed to spark a revolution. Hence it’s a full-blown face-off between modern vs traditional, patriarchy vs feminism, men vs women, sexual freedom vs repression, old vs young. All in the hope of arriving at some kind of equality in love.

The idea of a Sanskrit teacher getting a French kiss isn’t a bad one especially if you see the film as Srirenu’s comimg of age tale. He’s what we’d call today an incel, and everyone else, including Madhu, is just a player in his transformation story. From that angle, the film’s choice to stage everything like a musical makes sense, because Srirenu’s understanding of the world comes from what he’s been fed from films or otherwise. That’s why his life plays out like a cinematic rom-com, turning his daydreams into musical set-pieces, with boys following Madhu, music swelling in the background, and dancers popping up around him. Even his steamier thoughts are literally visualized as steam!

Also Read: Four Years Later review: A complex tale of long distance love that does not quite land!

But when you look at this beyond Srirenu’s lens and expect a rom-com where both parties are equally involved, Vivek Soni and Radhika Anand's unique concept begins to falter. The film follows every expected rom-com beat from the quirky best friends, family drama, the big realization moment to even a conveniently timed illness of a senior character to steer things toward closure. But it all feels too staged, as if the film can’t decide whether it’s playing with the clichés comically or parodying them, never quite striking the right balance. Hence the detailed production design by Ridhika Kapur, Abdul Hamid (Art Director) and Divya Subhash Ostwal (Set Decorator) wrapped in the stylized frames by Debojeet Ray are visually pleasing but feel oddly disconnected, too pristine for a story meant to feel grounded, only uplifted by moments of cinematic imagination. Though what does land is the film’s take on a senior love story reshaping younger perspectives. It quietly highlights the loneliness of women who become invisible while playing every role expected of them in a family. 

No matter how relatable Rocky and Rani might seem, they still come with the aspirational sheen of Ranveer Singh and Alia Bhatt, which adds distance. Srirenu here is no Ranveer. He’s a dark-skinned, shy guy from Jamshedpur, shaped by his years of loneliness and a world that molds men into a set idea of adulthood like his elder brother Bhanu (Manish Chaudhari), who claims to be progressive as he is okay with not looking at one's caste in a marriage conversation but reveals his limits the moment his control over the women in his home is questioned. Madhu is no Rani either. She’s practical, grounded, and doesn’t push her morality on others, but she is confident and clear about what she wants. As a Bengali woman, her world is staged like Bollywood’s default for progressiveness but she’s long tired of woke-sounding men who still carry patriarchal baggage. His fantasy finds some reality and her skepticism some hope until a sexual dating app called Aap Jaisa Koi unravels their illusion, where one’s modernism starts clashing with the other’s traditionalism. I get what the film is trying to do. It wants to blend rom-com aesthetics with grounded reality. While the idea is solid, it doesn’t fully land. 

Its aspiration to pay tribute to every film that has shaped our worldviews is understandable; we’ve all lived our lives drawing heavily from cinema. From believing in the dreamscapes of K3G or DDLJ to slowly realising that reality looks a lot more like Mrs., we’ve all been shaped by these stories. But in trying to highlight how aspirational fiction has distorted our sense of reality, this fictional film forgets to build a voice of its own. Even Madhavan and Shaikh, knowing what they can bring to the table, can’t do much to salvage this! Stylisation overshadows substantial authenticity, and what could’ve been a profound take on love in the time of pretend progressivness ends up being caught between cinematic whimsy and social realism. 

Aap Jaisa Koi is currently streaming on Netflix!

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