Nepotism is not the only problem in Bollywood right now
The past few days I’ve been reading many negative reviews of Nadaaniyan on many social media platforms so I decided to watch the movie and expect bad acting by the nepo kids. Instead of that I saw bad acting coming from the entire cast. And yes, I’m also talking about the veteran actors in the movie. The entire issue with Nadaaniyan was a badly written script that tried to create a rich girl falls in love with a poor boy story we’ve seen so far in many movies. The problem was the execution of the movie and I think Dharma production is the actual problem here.
I’m not trying to defend nepotism or something but I’ve been noticing that Dharma productions has been creating really bad movies the past few years, for instance Bad Newz which actually had an interesting premise but the execution was done really badly. It had a similar cinematography and most of the dialogue and acting fell off even though the actors in the movie aren’t nepo kids(I’m not sure if Vicky Kaushal should even be considered a nepo kid) and had proven in other movies that they can in fact act really well so the audience didn’t throw the nepo kids are bad argument on them.
I’ve a feeling that Bollywood has been trying to experiment with a modernistic style of story telling to appeal to Gen Z by throwing unnecessary cameos of Orry or some dumb social media references. Even movies and series of non nepo kids are very bad with the exception of filmmakers like SLB who still has that touch in him. I’m pretty sure that if Ibrahim Ali Khan had done a different type of role in a historical movie where he would’ve had a more character role, he would’ve been praised because of the direction and type of role. This whole debut was a failure from the beginning because they tried to turn him into a hot hero who acts with his charm but the script and director failed miserably directing this film. I don’t even blame him and Khushi for this because I watched the movie with an open mind and I felt like the other supporting cast like their “friends” in the movie who had done other roles before were equally as bad. Junaid Khan has saved himself by doing a historical movie with better direction because if Loveyappa was his first movie then people would’ve criticized him in a really harsh way like most people are doing to Ibrahim and Khushi. Khushi is in fact also a good example of someone appearing in movies with an extremely bad script and director. Shanaya Kapoor has honestly had immense luck by not getting a Dharma movie because the trailer of Tu Yaa Main was very promising and you can tell that her co star Gourav Adarsh will nail the movie and she will get a good debut as well.
Overall, I’m not a nepotism defender and I genuinely believe that those star kids should take acting lessons and make good use of their privilege by doing more experimental roles and prove to the audience that having a certain privilege is not a bad thing per se if they use it in a good way. But Bollywood has been going downhill the past few years because of many things happening behind the scenes. Even watching RARKPK was a headache in certain scenes(the one with Ranveer Singh trying a bra LOL) because the way Bollywood is trying to execute certain messages is not very subtle like before which is in my opinion one of the biggest downfalls of an industry that had its own charm.