The mystery is solved. There was never a mystery. The one-asterisk-short title of The Ba***ds of Bollywood hides the star in ba-star-ds, the ratings in reviews, and the censorious in the Censors. Whether you buy it, depends on where you stand in this chapter of Shah Rukh Khan’s Bollywood story.
And make no mistake, that is what it is. The outsider who is now the ultimate insider passing on the torch to son Aryan, who has to make the journey in reverse — should he choose to do so — without burning his hand. So, the father dips into his years of goodwill and, sure enough, gets the cream of Bollywood to send up a meme of Bollywood.
Nothing is sacred in Star Kid With the Mostest Aryan Khan’s debut as writer, creator and director of this Netflix series. No films are made, and all filmmaking is skewered, even as The Ba***ds of Bollywood itself cheerfully stays in the zone of the very campy 1980s phase of the film industry, with all its trappings — undying friendships, dying fathers, illogical action, and mafia dons with filmy dreams.
The upgrade is the women, and the casualness of interactions between the sexes. They can be friends who hug and talk and swear and smoke and drink, without ending up in bed. Who knew?
And that seems to be Aryan Khan’s vision — Bollywood as the bastard child. As much a product of unacknowledged liaisons on and off screen, as an object of guilty pleasure. Starting with his own dad, always the star and never the actor Khan, who made his way into celluloid heaven without getting a seat at cinema’s high table.
Now that he is up there with the gods though, Shah Rukh can do no wrong — even when he does.
Who better than Aryan to tell us about this bastardisation? You can be on a cruise ship one day, Arthur Road Jail the next, the media’s villain one day and its darling the next — without perhaps meriting any of the above, and with barely an ironical pause in the U-turns.
So why not a film where a Delhi boy becomes an overnight star in a film called the Revolver, with as much subtlety about it as its title suggests? So why not the boy’s “talented” musician uncle who has been an unlucky struggler all his life, but whose first struggle should be against his drinking? So why not a star kid’s daughter with a silver spoon but a heart of gold, who never has to be nepo tested on either? So why not a producer who kicks a woman set designer in the stomach, causing certain injury, and barely gets a rap on his knuckles? So why not a dig at MeToo, over a good laugh and some expensive drinks?
So why not open product placements for Aryan’s other dream business, D’Avyol (he certainly has a thing for titles), with no squeamishness about it? So why not Daddy’s friends and Mom’s pals dropping in as Easter eggs? So why not a cop who makes random drug raids and random arrests, as the media captures him driving away with the wrong guy? So why not an awards show that everyone takes seriously, and no one does? And why not an actual illegitimate child twist with serious consequences, but where everyone moves on before you can spell trauma? And, why not communal harmony, that has become Shah Rukh’s burden to bear, rubbing shoulders with casual communal stereotypes?
Aryan does all this, and Aryan gets away (where are all the easily offended?) because Aryan can. He stands on the shoulders of a man who has redefined Bollywood, and who has come to know only some of it has to do with what’s on screen.
No Shah Rukh Khan fan will say this is a Shah Rukh Khan film. But, isn’t it now? Karan Johar saying “don’t f… with the movie mafia”, a policeman saying “jail time only makes one more famous”, Aamir Khan and S S Rajamouli discussing seriously the merits of idli-sambhar vs vada-paav even as an aged, wrinkly SRK gets VFX-ed into Benjamin Button smoothness, and an elopement that isn’t without the girl’s father’s approval, but which marks the end of something than the start of one.
They say Aryan Khan doesn’t smile; “he certainly hasn’t since that jail stint.” Somewhere out there, he is having a laugh.
You can join in — or not. The point is, he doesn’t need to care.
shalini.langer@expressindia.com
