Ajay Devgn, Anshul Sharma, comedy, De De Pyaar De, De De Pyaar De 2, drama, Gautami Kapoor, India, Ishita Dutta, Jaaved Jaaferi, Jyoti Gauba, Meezaan Jafri, Meneka Arora, movies, R. Madhavan, Rakul Preet Singh, reviews, Sameer Malhotra, Sanjeev Seth, Tarun Gehlot
November 16, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Anshul Sharma
Hindi with subtitles
Culture Representation: Taking place in unnamed cities in India, the comedy/drama film “De De Pyaar De 2” (a sequel to the 2019 movie “De De Pyaar De”) features a predominantly Asian cast of characters (with a few white people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A 52-year-old financial investor has challenges in getting the approval of the parents of his 28-year-old girlfriend.
Culture Audience: “De De Pyaar De 2” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners, the first “De De Pyaar De” movie, and romantic dramedies where loathsome and toxic conduct is treated as a harmless joke.
“De De Pyaar De 2” is an awful and irritating sequel about an age-gap romance that wants viewers to believe that the dishonest, manipulative and petulant main characters have relationships worth admiring. This comedy/drama’s tone is an uneven mess. The age gap isn’t the real problem in the movie’s central romance. The problem is that almost all of the movie’s characters are emotionally immature and are not fun to watch.
Directed by Anshul Sharma and written by Luv Ranjan and Tarun Jain, “De De Pyaar De 2” is a sequel to 2019’s “De De Pyaar De,” which was directed by Akiv Ali and written by Ranjan and Jain. Both movies fail to convince that the central couple has true love. Instead, the movie is just an annoying series of shouting matches and people telling lies to hurt each other until the inevitable outcome, which looks very phony and forced. “De De Pyaar De” means “Give Me Love” in Hindi, but disappointed viewers are more likely to think, “Give me my time back,” after watching this dreadful sequel.
“De De Pyaar De 2” (which takes place in unnamed cities India) begins with a montage summary of what happened in “De De Pyaar De.” In the first “De De Pyaar De” movie, 50-year-old financial investor Ashish “Ashu” Mehra (played by Ajay Devgn), who works in London, begins dating 26-year-old woman Ayesha (played by Rakul Preet Singh), which leads to complications and lies because Ashish brings Ayesha home to meet his family in Manali, India. There is no believable romantic chemistry between this couple.
At the time, Ashish was separated from his wife Manju Mehra (played by Tabu), who was living with their young adult children—son Ishaan Mehra (played by Bhavin Bhanushali) and daughter Ishika Mehra (played by Inayat Sood)—at the home of Ashish’s parents Veerendra Mehra (played by Alok Nath) and Suman Mehra (played by Madhumalti Kapoor). After a series of deceptions, everything worked out in the expected way. “De De Pyaar De” ended with Ashish saying out loud that now he and Ayesha have to get the approval of her parents.
That parental approval is the basis of the conflict in “De De Pyaar De 2.” As an example of how sloppy the movie’s screenwriting is, Ashish is now 52 years old, and Ayesha is now 28. But in the movie, Ayesha says that she’s been dating Ashish (who is now divorced) for only six months. It would be an understatement to say that the sequel’s timeline is off-kilter.
Do the “De De Pyaar De 2” filmmakers think viewers are too stupid to know basic math? The only people who might notice this contradictory timeline are people who know that Ashish was 50 and Ayesha was 26 in “De De Pyaar De.” But with a six-year time lag between these two movies, it makes even less sense to pretend that only six months have passed since the first “De De Pyaar De” movie.
After the montage summary of the first “De De Pyaar De” movie, “De De Pyaar De 2” shows Ayesha going back to visit her family in an unnamed city in India. Ayesha’s father Rakesh “Rajji” Khurana (played by R. Madhavan) is stern and judgmental. Ayesha’s mother Anju “Rajji” Khurana (played by Gautami Kapoor) is not as rigid in what she expects from Ayesha, but Anju ultimately goes along with the horrible lies and harmful schemes that Rakesh thinks up so he can control Ayesha’s love life.
Ayesha’s older brother Rohan (played by Tarun Gehlot) and his wife Kittu (played by Ishita Dutta) live with Rakesh and Anju. In the beginning of the movie, Kittu is pregnant. A very unfunny running joke in the movie is that Kittu pretends to go into labor whenever family arguments start, until this manipulation tactic no longer works. Kittu eventually gives birth to a girl, who has the misfortune of being born into this unpleasant family.
Rakesh and Anju repeatedly say out loud that they are progressive, modern and open-minded. However, their actions throughout the movie show they are very uptight and conservative when it comes to the type of man they think Ayesh should be dating. Everything in “De De Pyaar De 2” is like a throwback to a moldy old sitcom, including the movie’s extremely aggravating sitcom-sounding music score, which has very intrusive and distracting sound effects.
Ayesha doesn’t want to tell her parents right away that she’s dating a 52-year-old divorced man with two adult children. She gradually tells them this information in bits and pieces and leaves out his real age as the last detail that she reveals about Ashish, who is close in age to Ayesha’s father Rakesh. When Ayesha’s parents finally meet Ashish, they pretend to be accepting of him. But they secretly disapprove and plot to break up the relationship between Ayesha and Ashish.
Ashish’s closest friend Ronak Molta (played by Jaaved Jaaferi), who had a smaller role in the first “De De Pyaar De” movie, reprises his role as a confidant who’s supposed to give “common sense” advice to Ashish. It’s a useless role because the way these people act is the opposite of common sense. Ayesha apparently doesn’t have any close friends because no one tells her that she’s being an insufferable brat throughout the movie.
Ayesha’s parents bring back her childhood friend Aditya (played by Meezaan Jafri) into Ayesha’s life so that he can court her. Aditya is affluent, handsome and close to Ayesha’s age. Ayesha’s parents (especially her father) would prefer that Ayesha marry Aditya instead of Ashish. Other family members show up in the story, such as Aditya’s mother (played by Jyoti Gauba), Aditya’s father (played by Sameer Malhotra), Kittu’s mother (played by Meneka Arora) and Kittu’s father (played by Sanjeev Seth). You can easily predict the rest of this tedious movie that is severely lacking in originality.
One of the biggest problems with “De De Pyaar De” is its erratic tone. The first two-thirds of “De De Pyaar De 2” are like a wacky sitcom, while the last third of the movie is a weepy melodrama. The performances overall are mediocre-to-terrible. (It doesn’t help that the dialogue is excruciatingly bad.) As is the case with many terrible movies that have a flimsy plot, there are convoluted distractions that take up too much time. “De De Pyaar De 2” has a very bloated total run time of 146 minutes.
Worst of all: For a movie that’s supposed to be about love and romance, there is no true love shown in “De De Pyaar De 2.” Instead, the story is mostly about battles of egos, people hurting each other emotionally, and mean-spirited deceitfulness, with any “romance” looking very fake, due to the lack of chemistry between the co-stars who are supposed to be in a romantic relationships. There’s too much anger, sadness and dysfunction in “De De Pyaar De” for it to be a credible romantic movie. Trying to convince viewers that the central relationship is a wonderful love story is just one of the many lies that this horrible movie tells.
Yash Raj Films released “De De Pyaar De 2” in select U.S. cinemas and in India on November 14, 2025.