The great hand-me-down

Khushi and Ibrahim coast on surnames in ‘Nadaaniyan’

There is something indescribably fun about hating nepo babies. And not just any nepo babies. An unusually potent vitriol greets them when they appear on our screens. Unlike industrial and political dynasties, a star-studded lineage in showbiz is a perennial, very visual reminder of the potholed road to success.

An ambitious employee might find it just as frustrating to see the top seat at their firm reserved for the boss’s son. But at least they can clock out at 5PM (or later, if the boss is a tyrant) and unwind with the comfort of undemanding, uninterrupted media consumption. Unless, of course, their pick for the evening is Shauna Gautam’s directorial debut, Nadaaniyan – in which case, a corporate despot might actually be a welcome distraction.

Derivative at every turn

Saif Ali Khan’s son, Ibrahim Ali Khan makes his acting debut with this painfully uninspired rom-com opposite Khushi Kapoor, daughter of late Bollywood legend Sridevi and producer Boney Kapoor, who made her acting debut with Zoya Akhtar’s The Archies (2023). Nadaaniyan, too, arrives with full industry backing under the glowing banner of Karan Johar’s Dharmatic Entertainment.

The result is a story that will remind the audience of something else with every passing minute – including its two protagonists. Whatever Nadaaniyan attempts has been done before, and in far better ways, which is remarkable given the limited iterations of tired tropes like rich girl falls for poor guy and fake dating turns real. If Gautam thought a coupling of once-successful formulae would yield something new, she should have followed the nepo baby discourse more closely. After all, for every Ranbir Kapoor and Sanjay Dutt, there is an Abhishek Bachchan and Esha Deol.

Ibrahim, too, has been done before – and better – by his father, Saif, the poster boy for 2000s rom-coms. As for Khushi, she brings to mind neither Sridevi nor Katrina Kaif (famously too charming to need acting lessons), nor even Ananya Panday – Khushi’s contemporary and fellow nepo baby, who is attractively aware of her lineage and limitations. Instead, she exudes something terminally confused. Something that has the echoes of ambition and a complete inability to fight for it.

Is the indescribable fun of hate-watching nepo babies as they infiltrate our screens just frustration in disguise? At least a billionaire entrepreneur’s son failing spectacularly isn’t served up for public consumption. In contrast, with an already dwindling pool of fresh storytelling in Bollywood and local cinemas, audiences are condemned to films like Nadaaniyan and remember once again how fundamentally askew the system is. Mediocre new actors can be overlooked, but mediocre nepo babies will always hog a negative spotlight, and in showbiz, to be ignored is far worse than to be slammed.

A shallow potpourri

For those who lean toward a millennial sensibility instead of the scroll-happy habits of Gen?Z and Gen?Alpha, Nadaaniyan may even shift your sympathies. Never before has a young generation been reduced to such a conservative mockery of politics and belief. Khushi plays the chirpy, super-rich Pia Jaisingh, the only child of bitterly estranged parents played by Suniel Shetty and Mahima Chaudhry, whose desire for a son is made no secret.

Pia’s only solace in her affection-starved life comes from her two best friends – two women willing to dismantle their trio over an unabashedly creepy guy. Determined to dispel suspicions about her alleged relationship with Mr Creepy, Pia decides to hire a boyfriend.

Enter Arjun Mehta (Ibrahim), a man with both brains and looks but lacking the ultra-wealthy pedigree. His parents are a charming pair of white-collar workers (Dia Mirza as a teacher and Jugal Hansraj as a doctor). It’s one of the film’s many tragedies that Ibrahim inherits little charisma from either his on – or off-screen fathers. Even more remarkably, Nadaaniyan is led by two young lovers constantly overshadowed by the practiced emotional range of screen veterans like Shetty, Chaudhry, Mirza, and Hansraj.

If you can set aside the abysmal acting (a tall order in any film), the clichéd premise might seem digestible, perhaps even nostalgic for the days of Wattpad and AO3. Yet a solid wash of acid reflux lies in wait to sour the film with excessive snark. The digitally native characters come off as unpleasant, unfunny, and self-absorbed – a perception better suited for social media rants. Either Delhi’s Gen Z is uniquely unlikable and Gautam has picked the wrong genre to capture their inanity or the filmmaker is more interested in narrating her assumptions instead.

Mercury enters retrograde

It’s no surprise that the once-angsty, rebellious millennials have become the new gatekeepers of generational disdain, mirroring the criticisms boomers and Gen X once lobbed at them. Today’s youth exist under a cultural microscope, hyper-aware and hyper-visible. Khushi and Ibrahim, both 24, belong to a generation that is perpetually online, fluent in the language of red flags and icks, forever bracing for cancellation. Yet alongside the moral posturing is an ever-expanding infrastructure of digital surveillance, turning every misstep into permanent record.

Even in a world where everything is everyone’s business, Nadaaniyan struggles to justify its own. Generations aren’t monoliths; they are shaped by class, consumption, and shared sensibilities. Anyone who understands the agony of a situationship or the promise of a talking stage knows what’s at stake in modern love stories. These new anxieties about identity and dating demand an astute observer to read beyond the adrenaline-fuelled spectacle and semantics. Gautam simply does not possess that eye.