August 10, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Suneel Darshan
Hindi with subtitles
Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed city in India, the dramatic film “Andaaz 2” (a follow-up, stand-alone movie to 2003’s “Andaaz”) features an all-Asian cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A struggling rock musician gets involved in a love triangle with two sisters.
Culture Audience: “Andaaz 2” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the first “Andaaz” movie, but “Andaaz 2” fails as a sequel and as movie that could have been entertaining.
The vapid drama “Andaaz 2” is a waste of time, unless you want to see pretty people give bad performances. It’s misleading to call “Andaaz 2” a sequel to 2003’s “Andaaz.” The only things these two movies have in common are a filmmaker and a love triangle plot. “Andaaz” (which means “style” in Hindi) wasn’t a great movie either, but at least the acting and filmmaking in “Andaaz” were watchable. “Andaaz 2” is just a slow-moving, long-winded train wreck with a romance that is very unconvincing.
Directed by Suneel Darshan, “Andaaz 2” was co-written by Darshan, Parasnath Gupta, Sourabh Ratnu, Preeti Mamgain and Dipan Bhatt. It’s typically not a good sign when there are more than four credited screenwriters for a movie, because the movie’s screenplay will usually have the problem of “too many cooks in the kitchen,” as is the case with “Andaaz 2.” Darshan is the producer of “Andaaz” and “Andaaz 2.”
“Andaaz” was directed by Raj Kanwar and written by Robin Bhatt, Shyam Goel and Jainendra Jain. In “Andaaz,” Akshay Kumar, Priyanka Chopra and Laa Dutta had the leading roles as the three people in the love triangle. “Andaaz” was the breakthrough Hindi-language movie for Chopra (a former Miss World) and Dutta (a former Miss Universe) and became a popular film with audiences.
“Andaaz 2” (which has an unrelated plot and an entirely different cast of characters from “Andaaz”) is obviously hoping the same magic will strike again, by casting two of the three love-triangle lead roles with Aayush Kumar and Aakaisha, who are making their feature-film debuts. The problem is that the “Andaaz 2” filmmakers seemed to have dismissed that it’s not enough to have good-looking people star in a movie. Talent, charisma and a well-made good story are also essential for a movie to be worth watching. Unfortunately, the best thing that can be said about “Andaaz 2” is that the three main characters are physically attractive.
There’s really not much to the “Andaaz 2” plot, which goes off on some clumsy tangents. Aarav (played by Kumar), a struggling musician in his 20s, is the lead singer/guitarist in a pop/rock band. “Andaaz 2” (which takes place in an unnamed city in India) is so poorly made, the screenwriters didn’t even bother coming up with the name of the band, which is a trio. Not that a band name would’ve helped this abysmal movie, but it’s a small detail that’s missing.
Aarav’s two bandmates are his closest friends: drummer Ahsan (played by Parmarth Singh) and keyboardist Tony (played by Srikant Maski), who both utter buffoons. Ahsan is louder and more obnoxious than Tony. The band is shown playing at a nightclub in the movie’s opening scene.
Although the nightclub crowd seems to like this band, the band is underpaid at the end of the night. The band members gripe about it to themselves, but their options are limited because they want to work in this insular nightclub scene that is controlled by a small number of people. One of those people ends up becoming romantically involved with Aarav.
Aarav lives with his parents. Predictably (this scenario has been in too many movies and TV shows to count), Aarav’s unnamed father (played by Sanjay Mehandiratta) disapproves of Aarav’s chosen career and thinks that Aarav needs to get a “real job.” Aarav’s unnamed mother (played by Neetu Pandey) is tolerant and supportive of Aarav being a musician, but she worries that he might not make enough money as a musician to support himself and any future family that Aarav might have.
Aarav has money problems, but he no problems attracting the attention of women. (“Andaaz 2” has Aarav being shirtless or baring his chiseled chest for at least 40% of his screen time.) One of the worst things about “Andaaz 2” is how it awkwardly throws in scenes of a middle-aged “cougar” named Dolly (played by Dolly Bindra), a neighbor/friend of Aarav’s family, who sexually harasses Aarav (by groping him and trying to force Aarav to kiss her) every time that Dolly sees him. Aarva then uncomfortably tries to get away from Dolly.
Dolly’s only scenes in the movie are when she literally throws herself at Aarav, but these few scenes are a few too many. The movie reveals nothing else about Dolly, who is a one-note, shallow character. Bindra gives a terrible performance in her short time on screen where she embarrasses herself in such an awful role.
One day, when Aarav is at a public swimming pool, he notices a local criminal named Yeda Anna (played Jeetu Verma) steal the cell phone of a woman, who paced the cell phone on a table and doesn’t notice this theft. Aarav chases after Yeda and Yeda’s small group of thugs. And, of course, in a stupid movie like “Andaaz 2,” Aarav is able to physically fight these thugs by himself and defeats them all.
Aarav gets the stolen phone back just as police show up to arrest Yeda and his cronies. The police let Aarav leave without taking a statement from him. Of course they do, because that would get in the way of Aarav rushing back to the swimming pool to give back the phone to it owner for the movie’s first “meet cute” moment. The woman who owns the phone is a graduate student/aspiring psychologist named Alisha (played by Aakaisha), who thanks Aarav, as they look at each other with mutual attraction.
And what a coincidence: The next time Aarav sees Alisha, she’s in the audience of his band’s next performance. After the performance, Aarav flirts with Alisha by using a hokey pickup method: He pretends to look for something. When she asks what he’s looking for, Aarav replies: “A melody.” Alisha, who is sweet-natured and trusting, falls for this corny tactic. It’s the start of a boring romance between Aarav and Alisha.
Not long after Aarav and Alisha become lovers, Aarav’s band gets an important meeting with a top executive of a live entertainment company. Her name is Priyanka (played by Natasha Fernandez), and she’s about seven to nine years older than Aarav. Priyanka is outspoken, ambitious and doesn’t like hearing “no” when she wants something. It’s the same approach to how she treats Aarav when she decides she wants him to be her lover.
Before the meeting, Aarav decides to buy a rose to give to Priyanka. Aarav holds the rose behind his back to make this gift a surprise. But when Aarav and his bandmates arrive at the office, the door accidentally closes on the rose, making the petals fall off. Aarav doesn’t know that the petals have fallen off until he presents the rose to Priyanka. Yes, it’s that type of movie.
Priyanka offers the band an exclusive contract to perform eight shows a month. But her lust for Aarav is immediately apparent. Priyanka expects Aarav to go out on a date with her because she offered this contract, and she tells him a sob story about how all of her love relationships have failed.
It’s a sleazy and predatory proposition that falls under the definition of work-related sexual harassment. Aarav agrees to go on the date. He doesn’t tell Priyanka that he has a girlfriend because he wants to give Priyanka the impression that he’s an available bachelor, so his band won’t lose the contract. And that makes Aarav a dishonest coward who’s hard to admire.
It’s easy to predict what happens next: Priyanka, after a few dates with Aarav, decides that she’s “in love with him.” Unbeknownst to Aarav, Priyanka is Alisha’s older sister. (He’ll eventually find out the hard way.) All this means is that the “romance” between Alisha and Aarav is kind of superficial if she didn’t bother to tell him if she has any siblings.
One day, when Priyanka is hanging out with Alisha, Priyanka brags to Alisha about having a new man in her life. Aarav calls Priyanka at that moment and she talks to him in a lovey-dovey manner. When Alisha asks Priyanka who her new boyfriend is, Priyanka tell Alisha that he’s a musician named Aarav. Alisha feels shocked and betrayed and immediately breaks up with Aarav.
The rest of “Aarav” shows the ups and downs of this love triangle, even though we all know who will be Aarav’s choice in the end. Priyanka, who is financially supporting Alisha, gets vindictive and schemes to get Alisha out of the way by ordering Alisha to go to grad school in the United States. Meanwhile, Aarav’s band begins to thrive, but at what cost? This love triangle “saga” is so unimaginative and formulaic.
Most of the acting performances in this movie are atrocious. Kumar can’t even pretend to play the guitar because his hand movements don’t match many of the musical notes and sounds that are supposed to be heard when his Aarav character is playing the guitar. All of the songs and dance numbers are trite and forgettable. Nadeem Saifi wrote the music of “Andaaz 2” music, and Sameer Anjaan wrote the lyrics.
As more proof that Kumar, Fernandez, and Aakaisha were hired mostly for how they look, they don’t even do their own singing in the movie. The character of Aarav has several different people doing the vocals. The end credits show a music video-styled montage of the scenes that listing the different vocalists for each song. The real singers include Javed Ali, Debanjali, Shadab Faridi, Mohammed Irfan, Asees Kaur, Amit Mishra, Palak Muchhal, Shaan, and Neeraj Shridhar.
Supporting characters in “Andaaz 2” are two-dimensional and stereotypical. For example, Aarav has a happily married older sister named Seema (played by Puja Kameshwar Sharmav), an underdeveloped character, whose only purpose in the movie is shown when someone in Aarav’s family has a health crisis. Recurring thug Yeda (who refers to himself in the third person), who has more than one run-in with Aarav, is more like a cartoon character than someone who is supposed to be menacing.
The dialogue in “Andaaz 2” is inane and often doesn’t sound like how real adults would talk. The love scenes don’t have any believable passion. And with a runtime of 146 minutes, “Andaaz 2” is annoyingly too long for the flimsy plot and mind-numbing cinematic slop that is foisted on viewers who endure this wretched film from beginning to end.
Shree Krishna International released “Andaaz 2” in select U.S. cinemas and in India on August 8, 2025.