Anuj Kumar

At a time when mainstream romance usually oscillates between airbrushed fantasy and comedy, with a dash of toxic masculinity, Vivek Soni’s Chand Mera Dil arrives as a grounded, mature counter-narrative. It subverts the grammar of a Bollywood musical melodrama, or what we call the Dharma production tropes, to deliver a sharp dissection of modern intimacy with a melancholic flourish. After a long time, a love story doesn’t dump career and bread and butter issues. Aarav (Lakshya) and Chandni (Ananya Panday) are not flaky cardboards. Besides the raging hormones, they come across as believable engineering students facing rigorous academic pressures. They do not drop out when life gets messy. The writing (Vivek, Tushar Paranjpe, and Akshat Ghildiyal) respects their intellect and ambition, showing that pursuing career ambitions isn’t an alternative to a love story, or vice versa. It is a heavy framework within which the love story must exist, and Ananya Panday and Lakshya strike a delicate equilibrium to anchor the film’s transition from a lyrical college romance into a stark, mature reality. They establish an effortless physical and emotional intimacy early on, making the eventual fracture sting all the more.

These days, OTT films flirt with hinterland politics but settle for safe social commentary. They are conceived with the data-driven rigour of a journalistic research project, but executed with the unfinished, compromised soul of a half-written novel. The trending themes are child abuse and caste honour, but the actual grit remains strictly dialogue-heavy and dialect-deep. The volatile social issues get diluted by a cautious approach. The narrative feels distinctly over-vetted, leaving one with the inescapable impression that a legal team sat directly beside the editor, scrubbing away uncomfortable truths.

n a cinematic universe that has long portrayed Indian elders — particularly widows — as embodiments of quiet sacrifice or burdensome relics, Daadi Ki Shaadi arrives as a gently subversive, commercially packaged provocation. Neetu Kapoor, still radiant and effortlessly charismatic, steps into the lead as a spirited grandmother who dares to assert her right to companionship and romance in her later years. The premise reminds of Badhaai Ho (2018) where a middle-aged mother gets pregnant. While Daadi Ki Shaadi doesn’t feel as lived-in or organically rooted as Neena Gupta-led dramedy, it still delivers several sparkling moments that make it an enjoyable watch.

After a drunken Thakur Lal, driving in a daze, dies in an accident on a desolate Rajasthan highway, his modest Luna or Dug Dug bike begins mysteriously returning to the crash site despite being locked away at a police chowki by seemingly clueless policemen. This inexplicable event sparks rumours, then belief, and eventually a full-blown cult. A priest suggests devotees offer Thakur’s favourite items to the ‘divine’ two-wheeler. Soon, followers start pouring alcohol and offering bidis at the site with the hope that their wishes will be fulfilled. What starts as a quirky mystery evolves into a commentary on the rapid birth, intoxication, and commercialisation of a new religion.

At a time when the box office menu is brimming with masala entertainers, Ek Din tastes like a palate cleanser, blending mood and memory with a touch of magic. A gentle, heart-tugging alternative to spectacles and morally twisted love stories, the film leans into a quiet, introspective, and emotionally tender atmosphere. Set amidst the corroding corporate culture, where relationships tend to be transactional, it explores how a single shared memory or a single day of connection can feel like an entire relationship. Not a fantasy but a light whimsical sprinkle that makes the impossible feel real, raising questions about identity, fate, truth, and what lingers when everything else fades.

Glory fits right into that popular OTT template where a murder or whodunit serves as the entry point, but the real focus is peeling back layers of a specific society, its pressures, dysfunctions, and cultural realities. As Kohrra subsides from the mindscape, Karan Anshuman takes us to the neighbouring Haryana and pegs a story on the boxing culture rooted in patriarchy that underlines the prosperous State. Karan, known for exposing cricket’s underbelly in Inside Edge and power struggles in Mirzapur, blends sports drama and crime thriller in a rustic flavour to tell a compelling tale with uneven outcomes.

Bollywood’s arranged-marriage factory fires up again with a rom-com that feels cliched and worn out. The spiritual sequel to the 2020 original, once again trots out the familiar template: a gruff, Rishikesh-based wrestler (Avinash Tiwary) and an effervescent Delhi girl (Medha Shankr) thrown into an arranged match built on mutual lies and family fabrications.

Built between fear and farce, Bhooth Bangla seeks to rekindle the magic that Priyadarshan and Akshay Kumar created in Bhool Bhulaiyaa before Anees Bazmee and Kartik Aaryan took the franchise forward with two spiritual successors. As the OGs of situational comedy lay claim to humor in the haunted mansion, we discover that originality has long been lost in its cobwebs. The result is a forced trip down nostalgia lane, packaged as a summer holiday entertainer, where a few wisecracks, a couple of jump scares manage to seep through the ceiling, but even they feel like leaks from outdated plumbing after a point.