I went into Nadaaniyan with a modest request: surprise me. Ibrahim Ali Khan and Khushi Kapoor did not choose their parents, and inherited access does not automatically prevent ability. Hindi cinema is full of industry children who justified the door opened for them, just as it is full of outsiders who became tedious once admitted. My objection to nepotism has never been genetic. It is institutional. A system that invests in familiar surnames tends to protect them from the very difficulty through which actors become interesting. Nadaaniyan was the resulting showroom: polished surfaces, expensive light and leads handled like objects that must not be scratched.
The film arrived on Netflix in March 2025, directed by Shauna Gautam and built around a fake-boyfriend arrangement between privileged young people. Bollywood Hungama’s contemporary review called out poor writing while finding a few cute moments. I was less forgiving because the weakness was not confined to dialogue. The entire production seemed organised to prevent discomfort. Characters wore conflict as an accessory. Class difference became décor. Romance developed because the screenplay had booked it, not because two temperaments collided and changed.
A launch vehicle should contain a difficult road
Great debut performances are not always polished. They can be raw, awkward and over-eager, but the film gives the actor something resistant to push against. Think of the hunger in older Hindi-film debuts where a performer had to establish a walk, voice, comic timing and emotional temperature before an audience with no obligation to care. Nadaaniyan asked its leads to look appealing inside a pre-approved mood. That may produce promotional clips. It does not reveal whether an actor can command a scene when charm stops working.
Ibrahim has an immediately familiar screen presence, which is both advantage and trap. The camera recognises the Saif Ali Khan resemblance before the actor can establish his own rhythm. A smart launch would have disrupted that familiarity: an unglamorous setting, morally complicated behaviour, demanding comedy or silence that forces the face to think. Instead, the film leans on pedigree and presentation. Khushi Kapoor faces a similar problem. She is styled and framed so carefully that vulnerability often feels arranged by the art department.
This is why the defence “give newcomers time” irritates me. I am happy to give actors time. Producers are the ones refusing them time in any meaningful sense. They spend heavily on a debut, attach a famous banner or platform, then choose a screenplay engineered to minimise risk. The young performer receives visibility without apprenticeship and criticism without protection. A smaller film, a supporting role or an ensemble might permit growth. The grand launch demands instant stardom while withholding the material that could create it.
The writing mistakes wealth for personality
Contemporary Bollywood repeatedly sets stories among the affluent, which is not itself a sin. The classics had mansions, clubs and inherited fortunes. The difference was that wealth shaped behaviour and stakes. Family expectation, property, reputation and dependence created pressure. In Nadaaniyan, privilege often functions as a visual filter. The characters occupy beautiful spaces without being deeply produced by those spaces. Their problems feel imported from a template and resolved according to genre schedule.
A fake-dating premise needs precision. The arrangement should expose what each participant wants, fears and is willing to trade. Pretence creates comedy because performance leaks; it creates romance because the lie allows truths that ordinary courtship suppresses. Here the mechanism feels like a content category selected from a streaming menu. Scenes announce attraction rather than generate it. Supporting adults explain themes the younger characters have not earned. The result is motion without escalation.
Even the film’s embarrassing moments are revealing. A later Bollywood Hungama year-end feature singled out the Delhi-versus-Noida debate and the abrupt display of abdominal muscles. The scene became mockable because it confused a star-building insert with character action. Old commercial cinema was hardly subtle about displaying heroes, but its excess often had conviction. Here the calculation is visible: pause story, certify physique, resume packaging.
Nepotism survives through lowered artistic expectations
Defenders of industry families say audiences ultimately decide. That is partly true. Viewers can reject a film, and no surname guarantees a lasting career. But the market does not begin at the moment a viewer presses play. It begins with access to training, agents, producers, publicity, second chances and favourable framing. An outsider’s weak debut may end a career. An insider’s weak debut is reclassified as learning. The unequal distribution of failure is more important than the unequal distribution of first opportunities.
Creative cowardice magnifies that inequality. Because so much money and reputation rests on the launch, every choice is softened. The actor must remain likeable, the styling aspirational, the romance clean and the ending reassuring. Nobody risks revealing an abrasive quality that might become distinctive. The industry then wonders why young stars appear interchangeable. It has sanded away the edges for which audiences might remember them.
Streaming was supposed to weaken this machinery. Platforms could use viewing data, support varied lengths and genres, and reach audiences without opening-weekend anxiety. Instead, streaming has sometimes become a warehouse for projects whose glamour exceeds their theatrical confidence. The absence of a box-office number reduces public embarrassment, but it can also reduce discipline. A film merely needs to appear in a carousel surrounded by publicity. That is distribution, not a creative reason to exist.
What I would do with the same actors
I would cast Ibrahim in a tightly written ensemble where he is not the visual centre: perhaps a young lawyer who talks well and fails ethically, or a comic supporting part that requires reaction rather than posing. I would give Khushi a director interested in stillness and contradiction, not only clothes and close-ups. Neither needs another film announcing arrival. They need characters who can be disliked, scenes that cannot be rescued by music and co-actors allowed to overpower them.
I would also separate romance from luxury for a while. Put young actors in offices, buses, shared flats, district courts, hospitals or small businesses—not because poverty automatically creates authenticity, but because specific environments impose behaviour. Make them learn an occupation. Let money have consequences. Let dialogue arise from regional and professional experience rather than a writers’ room’s idea of youth slang.
The counterargument is that Nadaaniyan sought to be a light young romance, not an acting examination. Fine. Lightness is difficult. It requires pace, chemistry, wit and an understanding of how little plot can still reveal character. Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Basu Chatterjee and the best mainstream rom-com makers knew that ease is constructed through observation. Calling a film lightweight does not excuse weightless writing.
I do not pronounce Ibrahim Ali Khan or Khushi Kapoor untalented on the evidence of one project. That would repeat the industry’s mistake by treating a launch as a final verdict. I do pronounce the launch timid. Nepotism’s ugliest product is not the famous child; it is the frightened film built around that child. Nadaaniyan protected its leads from risk and thereby exposed them to ridicule. If Bollywood genuinely wants its heirs to succeed, it should stop giving them cushions and start giving them parts.
