The Bads of Bollywood Review
Director: Aryan Khan
Date Created: 2025-09-18 20:32
3.5
The Bads of Bollywood Review: A Star Kid making an entrance is always going to raise expectations. Likewise, many expected he would enter Bollywood as an actor, considering how much he looks like his father, Shah Rukh Khan. Much to everybody’s surprise, he opts to make his first impact as a director. By doing so, Aryan Khan offers us a seven-part Netflix show whose episodes last anywhere from forty to fifty minutes.
The series is about Lakshya in the role of Aasmaan, the young outsider looking to enter the world of Bollywood, which is filled with glamour and ruthlessness. Joining him are the likes of Bobby Deol, Raghav Juyal, Sahher Bambba, Manoj Pahwa, Mona Singh, Manish Chaudhari, Anya Singh, Vijayant Kohli, Gautami Kapoor, Rajat Bedi and others. Together, they ensure that the show is packed with familiar faces, all bringing their bit of zest to the mayhem.
The Bads of Bollywood Review
The story revolves around Aasmaan’s rise, struggles, and confrontations with the darker side of the industry. Aryan Khan uses his directorial debut not only to follow the journey of a dreamer but also to expose the hypocrisy, insecurities, and absurdity that dominate the film world. Right from the first episode, it becomes clear that the show is not interested in playing it safe. Instead, it embraces an exaggerated, messy, and over-the-top style that mirrors the very industry it is satirising.
What I loved most about Netflix’s The Bads of Bollywood is that it’s never ashamed to be loud and frenetic. The show doesn’t soften the world of cinema up for us; rather, it embraces the silliness of masala narrative. The battles often don’t make sense, the stunts teeter into the realm of preposterousness, yet there is something so infectious that keeps it all going. It’s almost as if the show is acting as a fever dream in that anything is possible, yet that sense of unpredictability is also something that keeps us engaged. Personally, I liked the quickness. There was never really a slow moment, and every episode ended with me interested enough to press the button on the next.
Performance is primarily responsible for making it possible to endure that anarchic narrative. Lakshya, as Aasmaan, brings arrogance and showiness to the part. Initially, I felt that his character was rather exasperating, yet subsequently in the narrative, I realised it was done deliberately. It was the frame through which Aryan experimented with ambition and ego in Bollywood. Bobby Deol, with his authoritative screen presence, leavened the pandemonium with some realism.
Raghav Juyal showed again his sense of comedy, even though I felt that he could use more development of his character. Manoj Pahwa impressed, as he always does, by giving it the right doses of laughter and tears, and Rajat Bedi was, for me, a welcome surprise, for I found myself smiling every time he showed up on screen. The cameos were enjoyable to see and weren’t necessarily telecast all the time, although I confess that after a certain point, it felt that Aryan was over depending upon them to maintain the thrills quotient.
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There are elements of the show that genuinely impressed me. Self-awareness of how it handles the subject is welcome. It does not attempt to romanticise Bollywood or frame it as a starry-eyed world of stardom. Instead, he chooses to highlight its superficiality, its fleeting relationships, and the eternal lust for power. That frankness puts the show in its own corner and distinguishes it from typical Bollywood soaps. The humour works, too. Though all of the gags don’t quite hit for me, there were times aplenty that I was guffawing at the sheer preposterousness of situations. The frenzied energy, combined with devilish satire, made it fun to watch whenever I allowed myself to suspend my sense of logic.
That is not to say that The Bads of Bollywood Series was faultless. My main issue was that it was inconsistent in tone. Some of the writing was superb, offering wry commentary on industry superficiality. Other times, it felt that certain sections were included to be shocking or dramatic. It was at times not seamless in striking the balance between perceptive commentary and senseless pageantry, and the unevenness contributed to it being less enjoyable for me at times.
I also felt it was overkill to use too many cameos to take me out of the main plot. It is fun to see familiar actors like Emraan Hashmi, Karan Johar, or Ranveer Singh playing over-the-top versions of themselves, but the repetitive interruptions took me out of the world of Aasmaan. Likewise, Raghav Juyal’s potential was squandered by doing comedy relief when he could have been more important.
The second weaker aspect was the emotional depth. While the humour and mayhem were funny, I never really came to that place of sympathy for Aasmaan’s personal issues. His conflict and goals, much too often, became lost in the fray of the satire and surprise. More evenness with his emotional fate could have made the narrative more connected.
The Ba***ds of Bollywood Review: Summing Up
Overall, Aryan Khan’s The Bads of Bollywood are complicated but tilt toward the affirmative. I must admit that I enjoyed it. It was unpredictable, outlandish, and even at times witty in its representations of Bollywood’s darker realities. Yet, I cannot overlook the defects—the inconsistent writing, over participation by cameos, and failure to connect emotionally. It was for me something of a guilty pleasure: fun to enjoy in the moment. In the end, it is bold, vibrant, and mostly funny. If for its maiden project, Aryan Khan shows potential as a risk-taking creator, even though at times for nought.
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