‘The Ba***ds of Bollywood’: Aryan Khan Takes on Nepotism

Hindi cinema offers endless reasons to roll your eyes: from “kabhi” spelled two different ways in Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham to relentless product placements to the one too few asterisks in Ba***ds of Bollywood. But what rankles many today seems to be nepotism. Do star kids deserve multiple breaks? This generation’s answer is to tackle it head on, whether in Saiyaara or Aryan Khan’s seven-part ode to the very industry that made his father, Shah Rukh Khan, a superstar.

Yet, more often than not, Ba***ds of Bollywood plays like an echo of a far sharper masterpiece: Farah Khan’s Om Shanti Om (2007). Her film was funny, heartbreaking, and one of Bollywood’s most effective pieces of meta-fiction, stuffed with in-jokes and Easter eggs, from Divya Bharti’s suspicious demise to how Govinda got his name. This series, however, concerns itself mostly with the film industry news of the last five years — which means your enjoyment depends entirely on how much you know and care about that lore.