Aap Jaisa Koi - Lonely, Lissome and the Déjà Vu

Aap Jaisa Koi

Hindi - Romance / Drama
114 mins
Netflix

42-year-old Sanskrit school teacher ShriRenu Tiwary (R. Madhavan) lives a quiet, routine-life in Jamshedpur. He is a reserved man who keeps to himself, content in his solitude, with his Madhubala posters for company. His doting sister-in-law Kusum (Ayesha Raza) is always trying to find him a suitable match, even though Shri has long given up hope of finding a life partner.

But stars align and lady luck smiles in the form of Madhu Bose (Fatima Sana Shaikh), a French instructor from Kolkata who agrees to marry Shri. Madhu is confident, beautiful, and seemingly progressive, which is why It all feels too good to be true for Shri. 

After some initial awkwardness, they begin to court each other. Everything seems set for a happily-ever-after until Shri calls off the wedding after a discovery. This is a Hindi movie after all, so in the end it all turns out well.

There is  a lovely sense of familiarity to this story. The classic pairing of the chubby, nerdy guy and the lissome, charming woman works quite well. The music by Rochak Kohli and Justin Prabhakaran is soothing, with melodious piano and sitar interludes. Debojit Ray’s cinematography is soft and textured, with pastel hues creating some truly stunning frames. The choreography by Vijay Ganguly, is operatic and elegant. The production design is beautiful, showcasing the charm of both the cities. This is a very promising technical crew at work.

Halfway through the Aap Jaisa Koi, the familiarity dawned upon me. This was a less glitzy and dialed down version of RRKPK!. Directed by Vivek Soni, whose previous outing was the overly sweet and roughly cut Meenakshi Sundareshwar, this film shares another key element with RRKPK - it is produced by Dharmatic Entertainment, the OTT sibling of Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions.

All this familiarity made me wonder if this was Dharmatic’s way of “workshopping” its next-gen filmmakers by tweaking familiar templates to evaluate them?

To be fair, the chemistry between the leads is warm and sincere and their earnest performances make the runtime a breeze. Had the film ended ten minutes earlier, it could have been a poetic, visually rich retelling of a classic feel-good tale—perfect for a late-night watch with a companion. Instead, it makes a left turn, that crashes in like the monster that shakes you out of a lovely dream. Surely the writer/director could have used the available comical plotline to make Shri realize his folly, while sticking with the protagonists. That way, the messaging could have been subtle too.

It is  admirable that Dharmatic is giving opportunities to new writers (we do need them badly). But they would be better served by backing truly original writing rather than playing it safe with familiar structure and awkwardly injecting inadequately defined pivots simply because the OTT format allows for it.

Oh, and speaking of familiarity, there is one more link to RRKPK: Namit Das, the perennial king of the friend zone!