Prem Keetanu Review Roundup: A Premalu Remake Splits Critics and Opens to Under Rs 1 Crore
Prem Keetanu arrived in theatres on Friday, October 2, 2026, and its first weekend has produced two things that do not fit neatly together: reviews that run from lukewarm to warm, and box-office figures that are small in absolute terms. Today is Sunday, October 4, and Sunday's numbers are not in, so everything below covers Friday and Saturday only, and every box-office figure is an estimate from a tracker, not a final count.
The film is a Hindi-language remake of the 2024 Malayalam film Premalu, according to Wikipedia. It is directed by Apoorv Singh Karki and produced by Gaurav Verma, with Veer Pahariya in the lead. This post sorts out what the critics actually said, where they agree, and what the first two days of tracking show.
What Prem Keetanu is
Per Wikipedia, Veer Pahariya plays Vishal and Aafiya Sayed plays Suhani Sharma. Aparshakti Khurana is Ranjit, Nikhil Vijay is Magan Arora, and Rakesh Bedi plays Suhani's father. Reviewers describe the film as a coming-of-age romance with comedy, and that framing shows up in the outlets covered below.
It opened on October 2 alongside Drishyam: The Conclusion and Valmiki Ramayana. I'm not going to say anything about Valmiki Ramayana here beyond the fact that it shared the date. The comparison that matters for Prem Keetanu is with Drishyam: The Conclusion, and the box-office section below makes that comparison with numbers.
The reviews: a split, not a consensus
Ratings run from 1.5 out of 5 at Koimoi to 3.5 out of 5 at Daily Jagran and Bollywood Bubble. Bollywood Hungama gave 2 out of 5 and The Tribune 3 out of 5. The Sunday Guardian's headline also carries "3.5 stars," though I only worked from the headline there. MissMalini and Glamsham also reviewed the film, but I haven't read those, so I'm not characterising them.
That is a genuine spread, so each outlet is treated on its own below.
Bollywood Hungama: 2/5
Bollywood Hungama's review, credited to the Bollywood Hungama News Network, is the second-lowest rating in the set. It calls the film "a decent entertainer but suffers from a weak second half." The praise is about the writing of ordinary people: the review says the "characters come across as real and relatable, almost like people one encounters in everyday life."
The sharpest criticism is aimed at the lead character. The review says viewers "might also find Vishal childish and may struggle to root for him." For a romance that depends on the audience wanting the protagonist to succeed, that is a serious reservation, and it helps explain why a review that likes the characters' texture still lands at 2/5.
On the cast, the review says Veer Pahariya is in "much better form here than SKY FORCE," a comparison with his 2025 debut, and adds that "Aafiya Sayed is a great find."
The Tribune: 3/5
Subhash K Jha, writing for The Tribune, gives the film 3 out of 5. His review is framed explicitly around the remake question, opening with the line "Remakes are tough beasts to handle." The headline leaves the impression of a film that is "fun while it lasts." That is an impression from the headline alone, not a summary of the body text.
The review's central criticism is about ambition. He writes that the film "doesn't have anything startling or pathbreaking to say about love or life," and that it "only wants to change its protagonist's aimlessness and dating habits."
Bollywood Bubble: 3.5/5
Bollywood Bubble is among the warmest. Its review says the film "comes from situations rather than forced one-liners, which works in the film's favour." It also calls it a "sweet, sincere and heartwarming coming-of-age comedy-drama that leaves a pleasant impression."
Bollywood Hungama's point about characters who feel like everyday people comes at the same quality from a different angle.
Daily Jagran: 3.5/5
Tanya Garg's review for Daily Jagran also gives 3.5 out of 5, and its headline calls the film a "Heartwarming Coming-of-Age Romance." The argument is about novelty: "What makes Prem Keetanu work is not that it tells an entirely new story. It is the way it finds room for several familiar emotions within that story." It also says the central romance "doesn't feel overly polished, which works in the film's favour." That takes the exact feature the Tribune treats as a limit, the lack of novelty, and presents it as the way the film earns its effect.
Koimoi: 1.5/5
Koimoi's review, by Athulya Nambiar, is the clearest negative in this set. Its headline says Veer Pahariya's "Delhi-Fied Premalu Loses Its Charm By Trying Too Hard To Be Different." The review says the film "feels more like the highlights you watch of a sports match after it is over," and that "Each scene seems to be independent and is in a rush to just wrap up." It acknowledges that "the film is not an entirely scene-by-scene remake of Premalu," but argues that "it would have benefited from actually sticking to the original," and calls the writing "bland and illogical, with forced emotion." It also states that "The film's core plot is a remake of the Malayalam blockbuster Premalu," with additional scenes but the same characters and main plot. Like the Tribune's, Koimoi's review judges the film against what it started from.
Where the critics agree, and where they don't
Lay the reviews side by side and a few patterns come through.
Nobody is calling it groundbreaking, and most don't seem to need it to be. The Tribune says outright that the film has nothing startling to say. Daily Jagran frames the strength as working with familiar emotions. Bollywood Bubble calls it sweet and sincere. Even the 2/5 review calls it a decent entertainer. The disagreement is about whether that is enough.
The remake question divides the reviewers. The Tribune opens with a line about how hard remakes are. Koimoi argues the film would have been stronger by sticking to the original. Daily Jagran takes a different view and credits the film for how it handles familiar material. So the same fact, that this is a remake, is read as a handicap, a missed opportunity or a neutral starting point depending on the outlet. I'm not drawing on the source film's own reception, so I can't say which reading is closer to right.
The lead and the second half are the weak spots, per the 2/5 review. Bollywood Hungama's complaints about a weak second half and an unlikeable-leaning Vishal are the most concrete negatives in the set. Koimoi's complaint that each scene seems independent and in a rush to wrap up points in a related direction, though it is about scene-to-scene construction and not about Vishal specifically. I'd be cautious about treating those as a shared critique, because the other outlets I read did not raise the same points.
The box office: two trackers, two sets of numbers
The same rule applies here as in the Drishyam post. These are tracker estimates, they are reported separately, and I'm not blending them. The two sources agree on the direction and differ by a few lakh.
Sacnilk
According to Sacnilk's Day 2 page, Prem Keetanu earned Rs 0.50 crore net on Day 1 (Friday, October 2) across 1,886 shows. On Day 2 (Saturday, October 3) it earned Rs 0.35 crore net across 1,016 shows, with 10.0% occupancy. Sacnilk's two-day total is Rs 0.85 crore net.
Bollywood Hungama
Bollywood Hungama reports Rs 0.44 crore for Day 1 and Rs 0.31 crore for Day 2, for a total of Rs 0.75 crore.
What the two sets show
The gap between the sources is Rs 6 lakh on Day 1, Rs 4 lakh on Day 2 and Rs 10 lakh on the two-day total. That is small next to the totals themselves, and both trackers show the same shape: Saturday came in below Friday. By simple arithmetic on each tracker's own numbers, Saturday's net was about 70% of Friday's in both cases. Sacnilk's show count also fell from 1,886 to 1,016 between the two days. Neither source says why the numbers moved, so I'm not offering a cause.
Whichever tracker you use, the two-day total is below Rs 1 crore. In absolute terms, that is a small opening. I'm not going to attach a label to it beyond the numbers. No outlet read here is putting a verdict word on the box office, and the full run will say more than a first weekend's first two days.
Sunday's number is not in yet. Any projection of a three-day total at this point would be a guess.
The Drishyam contrast
The film played the same day as Drishyam: The Conclusion, and the contrast is stark enough that it deserves stating plainly. This site's earlier post reported that film's Day 1 net at Rs 62.00 crore per Sacnilk and Rs 62.03 crore per Bollywood Hungama. Against those figures, Prem Keetanu's Day 1 of Rs 0.50 crore (Sacnilk) or Rs 0.44 crore (Bollywood Hungama) is under 1% of the larger film's opening.
That comparison says less than it might seem. These are very different films, and I'm not suggesting one took audiences from the other. The earlier post also noted that the Day 1 figure for Drishyam: The Conclusion was itself contested between trackers, with some outlets citing a higher number. What the comparison does show is the gap in absolute numbers between two films that opened the same day.
So, is Prem Keetanu worth watching?
Going on what has been published, it depends on what you want from it.
If you are after a warm, small-scale romantic comedy with a relatable lead and don't need it to reinvent anything, the case for it is the Bollywood Bubble and Daily Jagran reading: sincere, heartfelt and pleasant, with a lot of its charm coming from how ordinary the people feel. The Tribune's 3/5 sits in the middle of that view, with a "fun while it lasts" headline and a shrug about ambition.
If you are sensitive to a protagonist you can't root for, or to a weak second half, Bollywood Hungama's 2/5 is the review to take seriously. Its argument is not that the film is bad. It calls it a decent entertainer. It is that the film's last stretch and its lead character cost it. And if you have seen the original and care about how a remake treats it, Koimoi's complaint about the film straying from its source is the one to read first, though I haven't compared the two films myself.
A Friday-Saturday figure under Rs 1 crore doesn't tell us whether the 3.5/5 reviewers or the lower-rated reviewers are right, and the reviews don't settle the box office either.
What to watch next
Sunday's tracker numbers are the first thing to watch, and whether they hold near Saturday's level or fall below it. After that, the question is whether the warmer reviews, the ones calling it sweet and heartfelt, translate into word of mouth over the coming week. That can't be answered from two days of data.
Sunday's number is not in yet. Watch whether the trackers' Day 3 figures hold near Saturday's level or slip further, and whether the split reviews shift any word of mouth.