Metro…In Dino (2025) Movie Review: An occasionally frustrating look at the shape-shifting nature of modern relationships

One of the non-primary storylines in Anurag Basu’s “Metro…In Dino,” a spiritual sequel of his 2007 sleeper hit “Life in a..Metro,” deals with a teenage girl torn between her sexuality. The internet has put her under the pressure of deciding if she likes her girl-best friend, someone she can’t afford to lose, or a young boy that her friend likes. It’s a genuine dilemma – a confusion that I’m sure thousands of young girls and boys go through on a daily basis with little to no understanding of how to deal with it.

This story thread places Basu’s new film at the center of aiming higher than just dealing with infidelity, the inability to commit, and finding the right person at the wrong time. However, what we get here is much of the same–old school romance, the changing patterns of loving the same person after falling out of love, and slowing down to settle because hitting everything that moves doesn’t satiate you in the long run.

But should we be mad that there’s nothing new, narrative-wise, here? Because last time I checked, even though we have moved faster than lightning in our chaotic cities, suffered major cultural shifts, gone through a pandemic, and completely moved from Facebook to Instagram, the interpersonal dynamic shifts are still the same. We still hate that our love life has no spark left. We still go through existential crises when the desk job we force ourselves into is not satisfying us anymore as our dreams still haunt us on those sombre days.

So, even though our priorities have changed and we are perpetually bored with ourselves and the person we so vehemently love, the conflicts are still the same. So, Basu designs “Metro…in Dino” around what he knows and loves. Dozens of good-looking people moving in and out of frame and cities, wandering away from the love that makes them whole because home feels too familiar, and the human condition craves chaos.

Our principal characters center around the trio of women Shivani (Neena Gupta) – mother to her elder daughter Kajol (Konkana Sen Sharma) and younger daughter Chumki (Sara Ali Khan). Shivani has been a mother for so long that she has no idea what her identity is beyond being a doting wife to Sanjeev (Saswata Chatterjee) and a mother to her daughters.

When an invitation to a college reunion arrives at her doorstep, something moves in her, changing the course of what she has been up until now. The middle-aged Kajol is the mother of the teenage girl that I mentioned above and the wife of Monty (Pankaj Tripathi). There’s no spice in their marriage anymore, and while they sit across each other, carrying the heavy weight of being committed, the glittering lights of dating apps catch one of their fancies.

Consequently, Chumki is ridden with constant anxiety. Being in the corporate world, she is a people pleaser. To the extent that she endures casual workplace harassment and fails to be straightforward with her lover when a mishap involving the playboy-like Parth (Aditya Roy Kapur) comes into play. The imbroglio chaos that kicks off the proceedings in the film takes place in Bangalore and also introduces us to Parth’s best friend Akash (Ali Fazal) and his wife Shruti (Fatima Sana Shaikh) – the cornerstone of the story to introduce survival in the big city under the corporate hustle and half-realized dreams.

Other characters and side characters, including Anupam Kher’s Parimal, form the crux of the story that eventually leaps to the need for communication. It’s a novel concept that Basu tries to get behind, veering away from his Mumbai-shot movie, which was loosely inspired by Billy Wilder’s “The Apartment.”

Neena Gupta as Shivani & Anupam Kher as Parimal in Metro...In Dino (2025) — Neena Gupta as Shivani & Anupam Kher as Parimal in Metro…In Dino (2025)

With “Metro…In Dino,” he skittles around Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Kolkata, and briefly to Goa and Himachal, but never does the movie settle down to let us romanticize the ‘Metro’ part of the title. The romanticization of the city, which was an integral part of the 2007 film, is largely absent. Basu is so busy cojoining his characters and sub-characters in a messy narrative thread that, beyond the excellent music, nothing remains with you.

Unlike his previous works, where his inspiration from other known and unknown movies was prominent, here it seems like the director is hungover on many elements from his own movies. I mean, there’s no reason for the plot device to have characters narrating to the screen, or doing a sing-along like Jagga Jassos. The stuffy narrative is thus cued up with characters singing songs to define their current state.

This largely hampers the flow of the film, which is an intermittently frustrating look at modern relationships and what makes and breaks them. The filmmaker, like always, manages to create characters that feel real – their dilemmas and confusions all rigged in real conflicts. He is also wisely aided by Pritam & Co’s soulful music, which, quite frankly, uplifts the entire enterprise.

However, one can’t help but notice that the cinematography fails to capture any city in all its glory. Something very wrong is going on with the lens used to exhibit two characters standing across each other because some of the real shots feel like VFX and vice versa. Additionally, the resolve of some of the characters feels jarringly rushed despite all the actors giving layered performances.

Overall, “Metro…In Dino” is a welcome change from everything that Bollywood has been (re)producing in the name of entertainment in the last decade. It has a beating soul that tells stories that deserve eyeballs. I just wish there was more to its contemporary chaos, or some form of rhythm that made it more memorable.