Shaandaar: -2015-

In the annals of Bollywood’s ambitious misfires, Shaandaar occupies a unique, almost dreamlike space. Directed by Vikas Bahl on the heels of the universally adored Queen (2013), and reuniting the effervescent Shahid Kapoor and Alia Bhatt after their hit Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania , the film arrived with the weight of a blockbuster wedding band. Its marketing was a blitz of pastel colors, destination wedding glamour, and a thumping, chart-topping soundtrack by Amit Trivedi. It promised shaandaar —magnificent—fun.

The film lurches into a bizarre, hyper-stylized satire of rich, dysfunctional families. Pankaj Kapur (Shahid’s real-life father) plays a deadpan, fortune-hunting patriarch. Sanjay Kapoor is a muscle-flexing buffoon. And then there’s the father-daughter boxing match. And the oddly incestuous undertones of the rival family. The screenplay, co-written by Bahl and Chaitally Parmar, mistakes volume for wit, and caricature for comedy. Scenes don’t build; they just… happen. The wedding planning is forgotten. The insomnia is forgotten. The romance becomes a series of music videos strung together by awkward silences. shaandaar -2015-

Let’s talk about the music, because it’s both the film’s greatest asset and its most damning indictment. The soundtrack— Gulaabo , Shaam Shaandaar , Senti Wali Feeling —is a masterclass in textured, euphoric pop. Amit Trivedi’s production is lush, quirky, and addictive. For weeks before the release, these songs were the soundtrack to a generation’s monsoon. In the annals of Bollywood’s ambitious misfires, Shaandaar

Watch the music video for Gulaabo . Then take a nap. You’ll have experienced the best of Shaandaar without the 144-minute wedding hangover. It promised shaandaar —magnificent—fun

What audiences got instead was a cinematic insomnia cure: a film so tonally bewildering, so narratively inert, that it became less a romantic comedy and more a case study in what happens when style cannibalizes substance.

The premise is deceptively simple: Alia’s Alia (yes, the character is also named Alia) is a insomniac heiress. Shahid’s Jagjinder Joginder—aka JJ—is a graphic designer who also suffers from sleeplessness, hired to plan her lavish wedding in Poland. They meet cute in an airport and bond over their shared, existential alertness at 3 AM. The film’s central metaphor—finding love in the loneliest, most awake hours—is genuinely lovely. For about twenty minutes, Shaandaar hums with offbeat promise.

Shaandaar isn’t a failure of talent. It’s a failure of vision—a film that confused aesthetic excess for emotional truth. It remains, years later, a fascinating, beautiful, and utterly exhausting nap.