Review of Bastards of Bollywood: Akka Bollywood, Nepo baby style

From its title alone, Aryan Khan’s Bastards of Bollywood announces itself as both provocation and inheritance. Skepticism was inevitable: here was Shah Rukh Khan’s son stepping into the arena, trailers leaning heavily on his father’s aura, and SRK himself fronting the marketing, confirming the critique that haunts every star child: a debut cushioned by privilege.

The show itself, though, is far stranger, sharper, and more self-aware than its marketing let on. This is is not another glossy Netflix drama but Bollywood’s first full-blooded parody of itself—a sprawling, messy, and gleefully savage satire of the industry that raised him. Where Farah Khan’s Om Shanti Om toyed with nostalgia and whimsy, Aryan’s vision is a millennial-Gen Z update: darker, meaner, and far less forgiving.

Close to Reality, Too Close for Comfort

The satire lands because it skirts so close to reality. In one sequence, a stuntman nearly dies performing without safety equipment, yet the producer worries more about shooting delays than the man lying almost dead. In another, a female assistant calls out her producer for harassment—“It’s 2025, you can’t get away with this anymore”—only to be kicked across the room in a comically exaggerated arc. The absurdity underscores that accountability is still performative; the humor is bitter because it hits too close to home.  These grotesquely exaggerated scenes echo far too many real stories the industry quietly brushes aside. Aryan wraps them in comedy, but the laughs carry a bitter aftertaste.

Cameos and Flexes

Then there are the cameos. Salman Khan, Aamir Khan, Ranbir Kapoor, Ranveer Singh, Rajamouli, Bollywood wives… everywhere you look, another star wanders into frame. Some of these appearances are throwaway indulgences. But others have already lodged themselves into internet memelore: Emraan Hashmi, playing an intimacy coordinator, has Raghav fanboying over him, breaking into song, and delivering the line—“Akka Bollywood ek taraf, Emraan Hashmi ek taraf”—a moment that has social media in a chokehold. 

Aryan clearly cashed in his privilege and industry connections—but to his credit, he mostly uses them well. The problem is that not all appearances serve the story. Sometimes they feel more like flexes than narrative devices, padding the episodes rather than advancing the plot.

Bollywood’s Self-Reflection

Bollywood has turned the camera on itself before. Zoya Akhtar’s Luck by Chance dissected the industry through realism and insider politics. Farah Khan’s Om Shanti Om did it through nostalgia and parody. Aryan’s attempt is closer to Hollywood’s Tropic Thunder—an over-the-top mockery of the business, where absurdity is the point. 

Where the show really lands is in its tone. It’s Bollywood’s first proper parody of itself, biting the hand that feeds it. It’s savage, not whimsical, unlike Om Shanti Om, to which many are comparing it. This is the millennial/Gen-Z upgrade: darker, sharper, unflinching. He doesn’t flinch from showing Bollywood’s sleaze and hypocrisy, even slipping in a shocking climax scene with an actor literally masturbating on screen. You’re left wondering how it slipped past the censors.

The self-parody goes deeper than stunt casting. Aryan stages a cameo resembling the officer who booked him in 2021—not as a wink, but as a pointed act of revenge and narrative reclamation. Here, the “nepo baby” isn’t hiding from his privilege or scandals; he’s weaponizing them, turning criticism and gossip into both confession and commentary. It’s a bold inversion: the very connections and controversies critics use to undermine him become tools of his satire.

Still, for all its bravado, the show is not flawless. The writing is uneven, often settling for easy punchlines when sharper critique might have cut deeper. The dialogue flirts with biting social commentary—on #MeToo, on body shaming, on industry politics—but too often slips into broad caricature. The music, surprisingly flat, fails to elevate the spectacle, and the pacing falters in stretches weighed down by too many narrative detours. Critics have rightly called it patchy, a show that thrives on parody and celebrity in-jokes but occasionally forgets to tell a story. For audiences less fluent in Bollywood’s gossip ecosystem, it can feel like being left out of the party.

And yet, the patchiness almost feels like part of the point. Bollywood itself is messy, gaudy, overstuffed, and rarely seamless. The show’s uneven tone mirrors the chaos of the industry it lampoons. When it works, it captures the delirium of being both repulsed by and addicted to the circus. Few Indian shows in recent memory have managed to hold a viewer in that uncomfortable space.

Beyond Privilege: A Generational Shift

The larger question is what Aryan Khan’s debut means beyond itself. On one level, Bastards of Bollywood is an insider roast, a nepo baby’s cheeky self-parody, and a glossy exercise in privilege. On another, it hints at a generational shift. This is not a son trying to replicate his father’s romance or charisma; it is a son gleefully tearing into the machinery that produced that stardom. 

Does he succeed? Not entirely. The show is too uneven, too indulgent, to be a masterpiece. But as a debut, it is remarkably audacious. Aryan Khan has arrived not with a safe romance or an earnest social drama, but with a knife aimed squarely at Bollywood’s inflated self-image. Whether he grows into a director with staying power remains to be seen. For now, what matters is that he knows where to aim the blade and, crucially, how to twist it.