‘Tere Ishk Mein’ Movie Review: Dhanush and Kriti Sanon Drown in This Toxic Ode to Male Victimhood (LatestLY Exclusive)

Tere Ishk Mein Movie Review: In A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick forces a psychopath into goodness through torturous conditioning. In Tere Ishk Mein, Aanand L Rai attempts something similar, except the 'conditioning' here is simply turning the hero’s horniness against him. The film calls it Ishk, while also claiming in the end we’re the last generation to understand 'true love,' and asks us to buy into it with a straight face. ‘Tere Ishk Mein’ Song: AR Rahman, Arijit Singh, Irshad Kamil Reunite for Title Track (Watch Video).

Dear next-gen kids, if you’re reading this… take it from me: what the film shows is not love. I hope I’m using the right term here, but what the characters express isn’t passion or love; it’s outright toxic lunacy that desperately needs treatment.

'Tere Ishk Mein' Movie Review - The Plot

Shankar is an Indian Air Force pilot, and therefore follows the sacred law of Bollywood aviation heroes - never listen to orders. After nearly triggering an international crisis thanks to his impulsive bravado, his superior (a wasted Vineet Kumar) sends him for mandatory counselling. He can’t fly until the psychologist clears him.

That psychologist turns out to be Mukti (Kriti Sanon), heavily pregnant, unsteady on her feet, prone to alcohol, and somehow cleared to travel to Ladakh for a high-risk assignment. And since the heroine is named Mukti  - meaning 'salvation' - and the film is about unfulfilled love, expect plenty of painfully on-the-nose dialogues about finding 'mukti' from both love and life.

Watch the Trailer of 'Tere Ishk Mein':

Anyway, when they meet, the tension between them is immediate. Flashbacks reveal why: years earlier, he was the rowdy student leader on campus; she was the doctoral scholar attempting to prove violence can be removed entirely from humans. He became her subject; she became his fixation. She warns him repeatedly that this is just academic (and yet she still plays along with his flirtations). He hears romance. Disaster, of course, follows.

'Tere Ishk Mein' Movie Review - 'Raanjhanaa' on Cocaine

If the plot wasn’t enough of a giveaway that Tere Ishk Mein shares its DNA with Raanjhanaa, the cameo from Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub confirms it. The film even insists that both stories live in the same cinematic universe.

How exactly when the two lead characters of these movies are played by the same actor? As Ayyub's character puts it, all heartbroken male idiots eventually start looking the same - make of that what you will.

Still, Raanjhanaa had something - despite its deeply flawed protagonists - that managed to connect. A revisit today will make its issues more glaring, yet the film at least forces its characters, particularly Kundan, to confront the consequences of their actions and grapple with regret. At its core, though, it remains the story of a man who simply cannot take 'no' for an answer, paired with a female lead written with frustrating inconsistency. But AR Rahman’s extraordinary soundtrack and the film’s vibrant visual palette softened the cracks.

Tere Ishk Mein arrives with the same director, the same male lead, the same writer (Himanshu Sharma, now sharing credit with Neeraj Yadav), the same music director, a similar narrative rhythm, and even the same locations - Benaras and Delhi. Some scenes echo the same emotional beats. In Raanjhanaa, Kundan dismisses Bindiya’s romantic advances with a line about how unbuttoning her blouse won’t loosen his naada. In Tere Ishk Mein, Shankar rejects Mukti’s attempt to 'give him the fun he wants' by taking off her T-shirt, insisting that his love won’t allow him to cross that line.

Yet, nothing connects here. The writing feels like a weaker photocopy of a controversial film from 12 year ago - a déjà vu without depth. Even Rahman’s soundtrack reflects the slide in quality; only the background score occasionally reminds you of his brilliance.

'Tere Ishk Mein' Movie Review - Celebration of Red Flags

If you’re looking for a reason to find Tere Ishk Mein appealing, it really depends on how much toxicity you’re willing to overlook in Shankar’s character. Look, I’ve said this before in reviews of films with similarly troubled leads - I don’t mind a deeply flawed protagonist. But they cannot be presented in an impressionable, celebratory manner where the audience is encouraged to enjoy their antics. That’s been a major issue with Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s films, and unfortunately, it’s a problem here too.

Shankar’s rowdiness and anti-social behaviour - beating up fellow students, firing rockets at couples - are first played for laughs (you know, ‘boys will be boys'). And when the drama intensifies and his actions become genuinely troubling, the film frames him with an oddly sympathetic lens. At no point is Shankar made to face the consequences of his behaviour, even though every setback in his life stems directly from it.

If Shankar is a classic example of a film refusing to challenge its toxic male lead, then Mukti is the classic example of a film being oddly unfair to its female lead. I simply couldn’t understand this character. For someone pursuing a doctorate in psychology, it is baffling how she fails to properly analyse the man she is using as a subject. The film wants us to share her confusion - does she love Shankar or not? - but ultimately, it feels like a narrative trick: make the woman so inconsistent and naive that the audience is nudged into feeling bad for the toxic alpha male.

The tactic doesn’t work. Both Shankar and Mukti remain persistently unlikeable, and after a point, you mostly end up feeling bad for everyone around them who has to endure their shared idiocy.

'Tere Ishk Mein' Movie Review - The Toxic Meltdown

The second half of Tere Ishk Mein is so drenched in melodrama and toxicity that it becomes almost suffocating. The film tries desperately to wring tears out of the audience through Shankar’s ‘victim’ arc - he is tricked into passing his UPSC prelims, only to realise that the reason behind it no longer holds meaning. But the screenplay does little to genuinely convey his anguish. The lament of male victimhood, as he moves from one loss to another, never quite lands. Dhanush Calls Love ‘Overrated’ Post-Divorce From Rajinikanth's Daughter Aishwarya at ‘Tere Ishk Mein’ Trailer Launch (Watch Video).

Prakash Raj plays Shankar’s lower-middle-class, kind-hearted father. Since they are Tamilian, their private moments naturally unfold in Tamil. Yet, during a key emotional conversation, the film conveniently switches to Hindi so the father can deliver a line that will supposedly shape Shankar’s future. Prakash Raj also gets another heavy-duty emotional moment opposite Mukti’s wealthy, insufferable IAS father (Tota Roy Chowdhury), whose dialogues are written with such deliberate pompousness that the film practically begs us to hate him. And clearly no one has the balls or the wits to tell Shankar to effing move on.

Priyanshu Painyuli plays Shankar’s best friend, but like everyone else, he is let down by the screenplay. Then there’s Jassi (Paramvir Cheema), Mukti’s green-flag fiancé - a man so devoid of personality that he exists only as a silent witness to the chaos around him.

The third act - involving a war-stricken landscape, a woman going into labour, and an excess of blood and hysteria - is where your patience finally gives way. There’s smoke and debris everywhere, yet nothing stings as much as the film’s attempt to manufacture sympathy for Shankar and Mukti, each trying to outdo the other in emotional misery. Trust me, there are no winners here. Only the audience loses.

Performance-wise, Dhanush and Kriti Sanon do their best (though Dhanush struggles a bit with dialogue delivery in the angrier emotional beats). The bigger puzzle is what convinced them to take on this film - especially Sanon. Visually, Tere Ishk Mein fails to stand out, weighed down by the murky colour palette chosen to match its dark tone. The war sequences are especially dull. In one scene, Shankar rushes out of his base to witness the destruction outside, but all we get are blurry, indistinct backgrounds. I’m not sure if AI was used to create some of the aerial warfare shots, but the fact that I’m even wondering should tell you enough about the visual quality on display.

'Tere Ishk Mein' Movie Review - Final Thoughts

Tere Ishk Mein is a muddled, overbearing tribute to a brand of toxic romance the industry should have left behind years ago. Despite two strong leads, the film drowns in its own excess - too toxic, too self-pitying, and ultimately too hollow to move you. Whatever this is, it isn’t Ishk. It’s chaos masquerading as love, and you walk out remembering the exhaustion more than the emotion.

(The opinions expressed in the above article are of the author and do not reflect the stand or position of LatestLY.)

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Nov 28, 2025 03:34 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).