Ek Deewane Ki Deewaniyat

Milap Zaveri’s Ek Deewane Ki Deewaniyat is the worst film of the year. I say this knowing that there are a few months left, that art is subjective, and the response it evokes is objective. I also say this because there is more strategy than heart involved in the making, and despite every tear and slo-mo being curated for cheers, Zaveri’s new work is gratuitous, concerning, and I will go out on a limb and say, is really terrible.

It’s a miracle that a movie named Ek Deewane Ki Deewaniyat exists. It’s like watching a 141-minute music video of tight reaction shots, slow-mo emotions, designer entry shots, personality twists and lone tear-drops. It’s also like watching an injured middle finger to a digital generation that equates love with consent, respect and dignity. If the movie were a person, it’d be a Sanam Teri Kasam stan who was once a Tere Naam devotee who became a Kabir Singh fan who became a MeToo apologist who then decided to explore wokeness within the realms of toxic masculinity. I’d be worried if this were a competently crafted film. Fortunately, it has the emotional intelligence of a soggy peanut. A visual transition early on hints at a self-cannibalising Bollywood story: coins thrown at a sultry single screen (because “mass” is the genre) match-cut to coins paid to a washerman by the humble siren from the screen. As the Scorsese meme goes: Absolute Cinema.

It’s been a few hours since I’ve finished cringe-watching ‘Ek Deewane Ki Deewaniyat’, and I still can’t believe Bollywood is making these films in 2025. I had been hearing about the buzz around the film, and my show was nearly full, which is a change from the usual near-empty theatres I encounter on the first day of the film’s release. And when it started, with Harshvardhan Rane and Sonam Bajwa, getting down to a romantic tangle, I thought I was in for something fresh and inviting. But I was so, so wrong.