Nadaaniyan: Ibrahim Ali Khan makes one of the worst debuts in years; is Karan Johar determined to set fire to his career before it even begins?

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The film reeks of being reverse-engineered and something Johar will himself make fun of within a year. Destined to become an actor purely because of his bloodline — because cricket requires actual talent — Khan might have fielded several bids from the industries biggest producers. Ramesh Taurani probably approached him with a sleazy thriller of some sort before it was decided that it would be more appropriate for him to be ‘introduced’ by Dharma(tic).

Khushi Kapoor and Ibrahim Ali Khan in a still from Nadaaniyan.

Couldn’t they have found a better vehicle for him; one that highlights his skills and projects him in the best light? What sort of roles he is suited for remains to be seen, but he clearly isn’t suited for this one. There is an aggressive dissonance in the film’s text and its execution. Khan’s character, Arjun, is described as a studious young man who earned a scholarship to a school for Delhi’s elite, ironically on the merit of his talents. Arjun hails from Noida, a detail that the film deploys as a slur of some kind on numerous occasions. He’s supposed to be middle-class, but he lives in a bungalow; his father is a doctor, and his mother a teacher at the same elite school. They’re doing fine; they have a little garden and everything!

But Arjun’s only goal in life is to safeguard his parents’ future so that they can retire in peace. Did they fall for a Ponzi scheme or something? Because a doctor and teacher certainly don’t need their teenage son to create an app that connects criminals to lawyers, and then sell that app to Google for a bagful of money, and then use that money to finance their future. This is one of the reasons why Arjun agrees to essentially serve as a high class escort to Pia, who thinks that announcing her elitism in the opening scene will somehow make her immune to criticism, and her actions above reproach. Arjun gives her the boyfriend experience in exchange of Rs 25,000 per month, because she wants to get a creep off her back. “Arjun ki aankh bas law school scholarship pe hai,” he says in one scene, referring to himself in the third person.

Arjun speaks like a movie character and not like a real person; he doesn’t simply say his lines, he delivers them. The writing does him zero favours. It’s always disappointing when older filmmakers pander to the Gen Z, despite having no idea how they actually communicate. For instance, who uses hashtags anymore? Were Khan and Kapoor, themselves a part of the film’s target demographic, not empowered to tell Gautam and her writers that they’d never use words like ‘safed’, and ‘warna’, and ‘khoobiyan’, and ‘waqt’, and ‘sanstha’ in day to day conversation.

But these aren’t real people. In his introductory scene, Arjun wins a ‘debate’ by lifting his shirt and revealing his abs. He says that he discussed ‘fiscal deficits’ with Pia’s dad, but does this seem like something that would interest a boy capable of telling a girl, “Tum itni hot ho ki global warming ki wajah bhi shayad tum hi ho?”

Khushi Kapoor and Ibrahim Ali Khan in a still from Nadaaniyan.

But he’s an easy target; a performance like this is possible only when an actor is given the wrong direction, or no direction at all. He delivers most of his lines with the arrogance of someone set to inherit a palace; there is little sensitivity, little thought behind why he’s speaking in this manner. Netflix itself produced Class, a series set in essentially the same milieu. Each member of that show’s cast was excellent. In fact, Arjun in Nadaaniyan is essentially a combination of Piyush Khati and Cwaayal Singh’s characters from that show — outraged at being outcast, hungry to assimilate but also desperate to stand out. Neither of these actors has done anything of note since they appeared in Class. Khan, on the other hand, already has a follow-up in the works. For all we know, Gautam might have a plum new project lined up as well. None of this would’ve been an issue, of course, had Nadaaniyan been any good.

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But the ineptitude on display here is indefensible. In one scene, one of Pia’s friends rushes towards her while saying something. The only problem is that her lips aren’t moving at all. The entirety of Nadaaniyan has been dubbed over in post-production, which is highly unusual for a Netflix movie released in 2025. It’s like SpaceX making a Mars orbiter with a manual gear shift. There could be several reasons for this. But it couldn’t have been deliberate, could it? Chances are, the actors gave even poorer performances on set, and nobody noticed until some Dharma higher-up saw the rushes and decided to intervene. If the Baahubali show can be buried after being shot twice, there is no reason that Nadaaniyan had to survive.

Couldn’t Dharma(tic) have erased this movie from their hard drives and claimed the insurance money? It would’ve been a less anti-art move than actually releasing it for the world to see.