De De Pyaar De 2 Review | A Befittingly Fun Sequel Dissecting Age-Gap Love Versus Uncompromising Family

Directed by Anshul Sharma, the second instalment in the De De Pyaar De franchise explores the practicality of enduring love and the instincts of parental protectiveness, all while subtly revealing how financial privilege can smooth over so many tensions in non-traditional relationships. The first film explored Ashish’s (Ajay Devgn) twisted familial relationships with his ex-spouse Manju (Tabu) and children Ishika (Inayat Sood) and Ishaan (Bhavin Bhanushali), all while dating Ayesha (Rakul Preet Singh). The second part takes us a little ahead in time into the inner workings of Ayesha’s charming and cunning family as they are introduced to Ashish. The film underscores that even modern, educated, and progressive parents are, at their core, shaped by biases, society and generation-specific upbringing—though, on second thought, not all of it is necessarily harmful. 

Starring Ajay Devgn, Rakul Preet Singh, R Madhavan and Gautami Kapoor in lead roles, De De Pyaar De 2 positions itself as a romantic comedy that definitely has all of the elements to become a mass-entertainer. Most of it can be attributed to seasoned actors Madhavan, Devgn and Jaaved Jaffrey, who bring in comic timing and hilarious references from their older work like Boogie Woogie (1996-2014) and Singham (2011). R. Madhavan plays Rajji and even gets his own background theme, cheekily titled “Who’s Your Daddy?”—a double-pun aimed squarely at Ayesha (Rakul Preet Singh), who quite literally stands between the two men in her life: her father and her future husband. Gautami Kapoor plays his sophisticated and graceful better-half and Ayesha’s mother. Their chemistry stands out far more than Devgn and Singh’s, whose dynamic feels oddly mismatched and off-kilter energy-wise. Devgn and Singh are meant to be in love, yet the distance between them—of age, chemistry, and conviction—is so palpable it practically becomes a supporting character.

Kittu (Ishita Dutta), Ayesha's sister-in-law is expecting a child and her delivery becomes the big-fat family occasion the film is centred around. Ayesha can’t bring herself to confess to her parents that she’s dating a much older man and tell them his exact age. Whenever the discussion drifts toward her relationship, Kittu dutifully stages a faux labour scare—a dramatic detour Ayesha is more than happy to exploit. The Luv Ranjan–Tarun Jain stamp is unmistakable.

The dialogues are somewhat resonant of Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar (2023), but this time they land with a far snappier bite. The last film stuck to the classic checklist—win over the families, stress-test the relationship, and end with a wedding. De De Pyaar De 2 uses the same ingredients but ends up being far more enjoyable. One rule the film swears by: Don’t question how or why it happened, focus on enjoying what has happened. Suspension of disbelief is a given with any fictional film, but here it turns into an unintentional joke—the characters practically live at the airport, and Ashish, Ayesha, and Rajji treat London flights like daily commutes to CST station. I stopped counting after the third nine-hour flight. 

Coming to the serious bits of the film—Rajji is a dutiful father without the usual cinematic baggage: no tragic childhood, no buried trauma, not even patriarchal conditioning to blame. His only wish to see his daughter married to a “suitable boy” is neither controversial nor unreasonable. While the film attempts to stitch together the first film’s ethos with the second, it insists that love is ageless but it leaves out the most significant part of the conversation: We don’t need more films romanticising younger women wanting to marry men twice their age, even in the comedy genre, for there’s more than plenty.

The fallacy of love insists that one can never predict or choose whom they fall for, but in films somehow it almost always seems to happen only when the man is older and the woman is much younger. Cue the nostalgia of Tabu (who also briefly features in this instalment) and her character Nina in Cheeni Kum (2007), where she played the younger love interest. It’s striking how neatly this becomes a two-birds-one-stone scenario: the film can cast a considerably older hero opposite a young actress without inviting criticism, because the justification is already in the plot. Genius.

To add fuel to the fire, Rajji invites Sameer (Meezaan Jaafri) to seduce his daughter out of the older man’s vashikaran. Sameer’s sculpted abs, inherent charm, his history with Ayesha and dreamy, shampoo-commercial hair are, unfortunately, competing with Ashish’s love. Despite Devgn being the butt of all ageist jokes, part of me expected Ayesha to realise she might, in fact, be happier with someone her age—someone who shares her interests and could reasonably be around for the next thirty or forty years of her life. Then again, her financial cushioning does tip the scales, as it often does in many unconventional relationship dynamics.

From a light-hearted angle, the film clicks because it playfully nails something far more telling: the psychological mould fathers of daughters grow out of, and straight back into. Rajji understands men—especially the middle-aged ones, who suddenly discover an interest in women half their age. He also knows his daughter deserves love that’s organically enduring, and true, not orchestrated. The palpable tension between those two truths is where this film quietly “almost“ succeeds. Serving this to Indian audiences is progressive, though not without its pinch of discomfort and problematic connotations. 

The cinematography by Sudhir Chaudhary refuses to grandstand, allowing the actors to command the frame. The pacing, however, stretches itself thin, and Chetan Solanki’s editing could have been far tighter—the film’s two-and-a-half-hour runtime really does love the sound of its own silence. Coming to the bits that fill the silence, the songs in the film "Raat Bhar" and "3 Shaukk" are spirited, foot-tapping and fun (barring the ultra-lazy choreography in Yo Yo Honey Singh’s "Jhoom Sharaabi"). 

Unlike sequels that exist purely to cash in on a familiar title, De De Pyaar De 2 feels like an organic, almost inevitable continuation of the first. The callbacks to Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (1999), Singham (2011), Boogie Woogie (1996-2014) and Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995) are rather clever and the story moves with both sincerity and intention. Overall, the film works very well. Singh is charming, opinionated and effortless in the lighter moments, but she falters when the emotional tension kicks in. Some scenes slip into full-blown shouting matches—more nails-on-chalkboard than catharsis. Yet, the film itself strikes a lovely balance between clap-and-whistle comedy and genuine, lump-in-the-throat emotion, offering a subtle but firm commentary on love, relationships, and what truly makes a man “worthy” of being a father, husband or even a brother in today’s day and age.