I recently watched Do Deewane Seher Mein and found myself asking a question I’ve been asking a lot lately:
What happened to Bollywood romance?
For decades, romance was Bollywood’s strongest genre. Nobody did love stories better. The industry gave us unforgettable couples, iconic songs, and films that stayed with audiences long after they left the theater.
Today, we seem to have everything except the romance itself.
Do Deewane Seher Mein had all the ingredients. A talented cast. A pleasant soundtrack. Attractive leads. It even started with an interesting premise about insecurities and self-image. For a moment, I thought we were finally getting a romance grounded in real-life struggles.
Then the film lost me.
The biggest issue was the casting. Bollywood’s obsession with the “ugly duckling” trope refuses to die. Putting oversized glasses on an already conventionally attractive actor is not character development. The film asks us to believe that Mrunal Thakur doesn’t fit society’s beauty standards while simultaneously looking like someone who perfectly embodies them. The disconnect is impossible to ignore.
And that’s a problem that extends beyond this film.
Take Saiyaara. Social media treated it like the romance of a generation. The hype was enormous, and I genuinely wanted to like it. But beneath the glossy packaging was a story we’ve seen countless times before. It tries to celebrate the power of love but never reaches the emotional depth needed to make us truly care. It’s not terrible. It’s just ordinary.
Then came Param Sundari, another beautiful-looking film that mistakes aesthetics for storytelling. We’ve seen cross-cultural romances before—from 2 States to Chennai Express—but those films had strong characters and emotional stakes. Here, everything feels rushed. The music by Sachin-Jigar does much of the heavy lifting while the screenplay struggles to give either character meaningful depth.
Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari suffers from a different problem: complete predictability. By the time you’ve watched the trailer, you’ve essentially seen the film. Every beat follows a familiar formula, every joke feels recycled, and the film never surprises its audience.
And then there’s Tu Meri Main Tera, Main Tera Tu Meri.
A romantic comedy lives or dies by its writing, and this one barely survives the opening act. The dialogue is painfully awkward, the humor rarely lands, and the characters feel like collections of Bollywood clichés rather than real people. Even popular stars like Kartik Aaryan and Ananya Panday can’t create chemistry when the script gives them so little to work with. The songs don’t help either, interrupting the story rather than enhancing it.
What connects all these films is a lack of emotional honesty.
They give us attractive people, exotic locations, designer costumes, viral songs, and social-media-friendly moments. But they rarely give us believable relationships. The characters don’t feel real, their conflicts don’t feel meaningful, and their love stories don’t leave a lasting impression.
Romance doesn’t need bigger budgets.
It needs better writing.
It needs filmmakers who understand that audiences don’t fall in love with beautiful faces. They fall in love with characters. They remember conversations, moments, heartbreaks, sacrifices, and emotional truths.
The greatest Bollywood romances weren’t great because they were expensive. They were great because they made us believe.
Right now, Bollywood seems obsessed with creating content.
What many of us are starving for is romance.