4 min readJul 11, 2025 12:30 PM IST
What happens when a middle-aged Sanskrit teacher who has never had the pleasure of female company, forget about physical intimacy, is given a glimpse of heaven? At long last, something he never thought was possible, is within his grasp: a gorgeous younger woman is interested in him. Is it for real? Is there a catch?
There’s promise in the premise. Relationship dramas are really where plots can dance around humans and their impulses, and actors can dig into nuance. The thing with Aap Jaisa Koi is that the surprise element is never given the kind of free reign that would lift the material.
As Shrirenu Tripathi, R Madhavan, now at a stage when he can play the complete opposite of the hot-headed lover of his youth, offers a quiet conviction in the way he digs into his lonely bachelor life at 42. Sitting under a mosquito net, his cellphone his only company, he is the picture of a man desperately in need of a woman.
Aap Jaisa Koi kicks into gear when Madhu Bose (Fatima Sana Shaikh) shows up. A soignee French instructor from Kolkata, all floaty saris and stilettos, she quickly says yes, rings are exchanged, and all seems to be set for a happy ever-after until heavy-handed men and moral policing crash the party. It is okay for men to be on a dating app, but women, especially those who say they are from ‘good families’, to not be virgins? Off with her head. Same for women who are tired of sexless marriages, and want something more.
Madhavan’s staidness and Fatima’s playfulness, even though her calling him ‘breathtaking’ in French feels like a bit of a stretch, is given some play. But the cute-girl, nerdy boy logline disappears when the Tripathis of Jamshedpur take over the scene, with Shrirenu’s bada bhai (Manish Chaudhary) stomping about, keeping his wife (Ayesha Raza) and daughter in check: the wife wants more spice in the bedroom, the daughter wants to go off for higher studies; both are told that ‘ghar ka kaam’ is more important.
It’s great that Bollywood can now give us a hero who is forty-plus, and whose insecurities around women — as his best pal says, the only numbers of women in his phone are of his immediate family — feel real. But that gives way to staged confrontations-and-resolutions which instantly lend the movie a faintly mothballed air.
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An eminently capable actor, Namit Das, who deserves a stand-alone role, is reduced to playing one of the oldest Bollywood tropes, the Hero’s Best Friend. It’s not like men can’t have BFFs, but why not give them something to do other than propping up the hero? Same with the heroine: if the Sanskrit teacher can be given detailing like dealing with classrooms and kids, why can’t we see her at work?
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Yes, we acknowledge the film’s attempts at earning feminist cred — women want not just platonic coffee but full-on carnality, and married middle-aged women can get bored and look for alternatives. Yay. But the way it keeps retreating into bland ‘safe family space’, when men are allowed to shout and scream and lay down the rules, while burrowing into tropes? Nay.
Aap Jaisa Koi movie cast: R Madhavan, Fatima Sana Shaikh, Ayesha Raza, Manish Chaudhary, Namit Das
Aap Jaisa Koi movie director: Vivek Soni
Aap Jaisa Koi movie rating: 2 stars
Aap Jaisa Koi stars R Madhavan and Fatima Sana Shaikh.