If you’ve already seen Rocky Aur Rani Ki Prem Kahani and you didn’t enjoy it, Aap Jaisa Koi is not for you.
Released on Netflix on 11 July 2025, the film is directed by Vivek Soni and produced by Dharma Productions. It’s a calming, classic Dharma movie remake-combination that just doesn’t land.
Cast and Setup
Aap Jaisa Koi is a 90s‑set Dharma movie directed by Vivek Soni, starring the great R. Madhavan, rising actress Fatima Sana Shaikh, and TV actor Karan Wahi, who’s still waiting for his big break. The film attempts to tackle a wide range of current Indian social issues—equality, traditional vs modern mindsets, plus the “age is just a number” angle. Yet after 1 hour and 55 minutes, none of these themes are explored meaningfully, and the moral appears missing.
Though the acting is spot‑on, and the scenes, visuals, and family portrayals are warm and authentic, the story and writing feel hollow and underdeveloped.
Story of Aap Jaisa Koi
The film opens with a classic Dharma song, where a bunch of teenagers are celebrating Christmas. The young Shrirenu (played by Madhavan) tries to confess his feelings to a girl but ends up disrespecting and embarrassing her. She gives him a “shraap” (curse) that he’ll never be able to find love or experience intimacy.
Cut to the present; Shrirenu is now 42. He’s single, lonely, and unhappy. He looks average, lives a routine life, and works as a Sanskrit teacher. He genuinely believes no woman would ever want to be with him.
Then enters his friend, a photographer, divorced, and far more outgoing. He tells Shrirenu about a new app, a kind of sex-chatting platform that connects strangers on call without knowing anything about each other. Shrirenu hesitates, but then pays the subscription and connects with a mysterious woman. They talk. Things go well. He starts enjoying the anonymous conversations.
Everything is smooth until one day, his sister-in-law introduces him to Madhu Bose (Fatima Sana Shaikh).
Madhu is a textbook Bollywood Bengali woman—she’s 32, teaches French, plays the piano, and looks heavenly. She’s single and searching for someone who sees her as an equal. Her maternal uncle, Joy, is the one who tries to set her up with Shrirenu, while Shrirenu’s sister-in-law does the same from her side. (A little too detailed maybe, because Joy and the sister-in-law also have a past and possibly a future together!)
So now, the cute girl and the nerdy man meet. They like each other and eventually get engaged. But, of course, on the day of the engagement, Shrirenu finds out that the woman he was speaking to on the anonymous app is actually Madhu.
Shocked, confused, and uncomfortable, he calls off the wedding.
The Next boring half of the movie
From here, everything starts to feel like a repeat of Rocky Aur Rani Ki Prem Kahani. Same themes—Bengali women being overly modern, UP men stuck in patriarchal thinking, and everything in between.
Things spiral fast. Suddenly, every character has their own story:
- The sister-in-law starts falling for Joy.
- The grandmother is almost dying (twice).
- The sister-in-law’s daughter can’t take an off-site job because her father doesn’t allow it.
Everything turns into a mess.
In the end, Shrirenu says he has a lot to learn and is willing to change. Coming from a patriarchal family, he admits he was conditioned to think this way; but now, for Madhu, he wants to grow. That part was the only thing I liked. But again, even the ending could have been more impactful.
Review of Aap Jaisa Koi
Reviewing a movie that tries something new, fresh story, slightly cooler setup, more realistic dialogues, feels refreshing. But Aap Jaisa Koi is more like a mix of several other Bollywood movies with a lazy age-gap twist thrown in.
Shrirenu and Madhu have a 10-year age gap, which seems to be the central theme. But as the story moves ahead, the focus shifts too quickly to patriarchy and equality, which just dilutes the original idea.
Honestly, when you’re making a film that wants to tackle social stigmas or taboos, it’s always better to pick one and go deep. But Vivek and his team probably wanted to check every box, and it backfired badly.
The visuals are calming. The actors, though underutilized, did a great job. But the story lacks strength and the dialogues don’t leave a mark.
The first 50 minutes had me hooked; not because it was great, but because it genuinely explored something new: the age gap, the loneliness, the awkwardness of late love. But the rest of the movie felt like a chore, like watching a remix of every Dharma movie from the last 15 years.
And one thing I still don’t get, why do directors keep portraying Bengali women as the only modern, liberated women in India? It’s always the same formula: Bengali girl meets UP or Bihar guy, and now we know exactly what the next two hours will look like.
Seriously, the movie you imagine in your head is exactly what these writers are putting on screen. Indian cinema desperately needs a break from this pattern.
Final Verdict
Aap Jaisa Koi had potential. The age-gap premise was fresh, and the leads had chemistry. But the screenplay collapses under too many themes, weak execution, and cliched tropes.
Rating: 2.5/5 – A worthy watch only for Madhavan and Fatima.
IMDb shows a whopping 7.9/10, but that appears to be fan-driven hype and may not reflect wider opinion.
Rotten Tomatoes critic score averages around 2.5/5, with audience reviews echoing a similar disappointment
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