Tu Meri Main Tera Main Tera Tu Meri movie review: Kartik Aaryan, Ananya Panday as lovers who can’t be apart? Nah!

And the biggest question looming over us as we struggle through two and a half hours of this glossily vacuous tosh: is this the best that mainstream Bollywood can come up with, for its clearly demarcated Gen Z audience?

US-based wedding planner Rehaan — call me Ray — Mehra (Kartik Aryan) and Agra-ki-ladki Rumi (Ananya Panday) meet not-very-cute at an airport bookshop. She is tall enough to wear small heels so as to not tower over Ray, but is having trouble reaching for some volumes placed on the top shelf: she’s the author of a book, see, and she wants to bring it within easy reach, see; he’s the annoying one, of course, who is seated next to her in the flight, flirting with an air-hostess. And of course, they find themselves booked on the same yacht, and believe it or faint, also the same cabin.

We know how this tourism tour will end. As they pass through picturesque cafes and beaches, reminding you of the hapless Harry and Sejal (remember them?), Cupid does its thing. Both are smitten. And then comes the conflict — Ray helpfully calling it the Big C (nope, not kidding) — and parental opposition. Actually not: the trouble lies somewhere else. Sure, parents are involved: Col Singh (Jackie Shroff) as Ananya’s dad, retired army man dripping patriotism, singing ‘Yeh mera India’, and Pinky Mehta (Neena Gupta) as Ray’s single mom, who comes in warbling ‘Choli ke Peeche Kya Hai’. Yes, for real.

Watch Tu Meri Main Tera Main Tera Tu Meri (TMMTMTTM) Movie trailer here:

Are we back in the 90s? Yes, yes, because that’s what the kids are thirsting for apparently: a 90s style romance, stuffed with glycerine and melodrama and songs-and-dances from that era.

A couple of sub-plots give other characters some room. Rumi’s sister Jia (Chandni Bhabhda) and her Tinder-hook-up is turned speedily into a shaadi: how else do you get the morose wedding-planner back in play, who has been Pinky-promised into winning over his dulhaniya?

At some point the plot remembers to pull out a mooney-eyed fellow (Gaurav Panday) to hover around Rumi. Other sets of uncles and aunties — one who keeps sighing over Ray’s abs — show up, with the Saat Samundar paar ladka who’s turned up peeche peeche, burning up the dance floor. Kartik and Ananya looked good together in the 2019 Pati Patni Aur Woh: reunited after six years, they don’t for a minute convince you as lovers who can’t bear to part. Shroff gives us sonorous dialogue delivery, with a few nice moments with Kartik, and Neena Gupta is flat-out fabulous as the supportive mom, more ‘tu mera, main teri’ than the hero and heroine.

It says something about us as viewers that we like our filmi romances to masquerade as soppy family dramas, and how they only kick in when the gaana-bajaana and rona-dhona starts. Or do we? Is this a myth Bollywood refuses to walk past? Whatever happened to being in sync with changing times? It’s almost 2026, bro, no?

Tu Meri Main Tera Main Tera Tu Meri movie cast: Kartik Aryan, Ananya Panday, Neena Gupta, Jackie Shroff, Chandni Bhabhda, Grussha Kapoor, Tiku Talsania, Gaurav Pandey, Lokesh Mittal
Tu Meri Main Tera Main Tera Tu Meri movie director: Sameer Vidwans
Tu Meri Main Tera Main Tera Tu Meri movie rating: 1.5 stars