Fabulous Lives Of Bollywood Wives Review: A still from the show (courtesy of maheepkapoor)
To emit: Maheep Kapoor, Seema Khan, Neelam Kothari, Bhavana Pandey
Classification: 2 stars (out of 5)
How fabulous you think the lives of the four daring Bollywood wives in this inflated Netflix series produced by Karan Johar are depends on how you define the adjective. Looking for heartbreaking entertainment in the form of a boundless glimpse into the rarely seen innards of the Mumbai film industry? Check your expectations. Fabulous Lives Of Bollywood Wives it’s anything but fabulous. It’s not even passable nonsense or, in a stretch, a “guilty pleasure” kind of fun.
Loosely modeled on American reality TV shows like keeping up with the Kardashians Y The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, Fabulous Lives Of Bollywood Wives You will definitely find interested. But it is not a deep dive. The eight-episode series does not provide real information. When you want to be flashy, you are flimsy. Not even windy enough to review? Sell lifestyles instead of lives.
The four women in the series, Bhavana Panday, Maheep Kapoor, Seema Khan, and Neelam Kothari Soni, are celebrities. But they have lives beyond the glare of the media spotlight. Bhavana, Chunky Panday’s wife, owns a fashion line. Maheep abandoned her acting aspirations for the sake of marriage to Sanjay Kapur and motherhood. Seema Khan, Sohail Khan’s wife, is a busy fashion stylist.
Neelam, married to actor and director Samir Soni, had a thriving Bollywood career in the 1980s and is now a jewelry entrepreneur. If all of this had been taken into account in the series in a more pronounced way, the show wouldn’t have felt so light. The glitz and glamor of being a part of Bollywood, no matter how tangentially, is what the show emphasizes rather than focusing attention on the “mundane lives” of the four women as they address their personal and professional commitments.
Bhavana, Seema, Maheep and Neelam have been friends for a quarter of a century, a fact they flaunt while drinking wine and dining, attending parties and going on a girl’s vacation. But much of what they are made to do on the show doesn’t seem entirely unscripted and is largely wasted on frivolous activities and youth commotion.
Some parts of the show tell us a bit about their 24/7 roles as mothers while staying in shape and running their businesses. But nothing can dispel the feeling that Fabulous Lives Of Bollywood Wives he’s selling us fluff.
Fabulous Lives Of Bollywood Wives Review: A still from the show (courtesy of YouTube)
We don’t see many of the interactions of women with their husbands or children. The focus is on them worrying about what to wear to a party, getting into a major scandal over a minor point of dispute between two of them on one occasion, and getting into a meeting difficult to explain when one of the husbands, on one night partying, he mentions the prickly abbreviation millennial MILF.
At one end of the spectrum, Neelam, who turned her back on her acting career many years ago, plans to return to the center of the action. In the other, Shanaya, the 19-year-old daughter of Maheep and Sanjay Kapoor, takes small steps as a public figure in preparation for a career in Bollywood. After an event in Paris, where the Kapoors are having fun, the young woman is brutally trolled back home. The mother, understandably, takes it badly. He seeks the help of his nephew Arjun Kapoor to overcome the crisis. It is not easy to be a star child, to have tough skin, advises the actor.
When they aren’t planning their next date with Karan Johar, who surfaces multiple times and happily takes over the show, they give Maheep the responsibility of putting together an itinerary for a Doha vacation. Two of the episodes are dedicated to the stay in Qatar. We wonder if this series will work for Qatar (when the pandemic ends and we can travel freely again). Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara did for Spain.
Fabulous Lives Of Bollywood Wives Review: A still from the show (courtesy of YouTube)
Fabulous Lives Of Bollywood Wives it also includes fashion brand Bhavana Panday and Gauri Khan Designs, as well as shedding some light on Seema Khan’s styling work. Gauri appears in the final episode, as is a charming SRK as always. But you have to go through a lot of nonsense before the big party at the end of the series.
The show is content to project the quartet as exuberant, fun-loving women who love to be who they are. That is perfectly in order. Some of the most interesting moments occur when the topic of Bollywood careers is approached hitting rock bottom (Sanjay Kapoor is inevitably mentioned) or when an actor who has spent three and a half decades in the industry without ever winning an award never defends it.
Chunky Panday refers to the disappointment of not winning a statuette for his performance at Tezaab, even as he proudly clings to a best rookie award bagged by his daughter Ananya.
Fabulous Lives Of Bollywood Wives Review: A still from the show (courtesy of YouTube)
It also seeks to generate drama as the girls take off for Doha and the fear of flying reduces Seema to a mental disaster. The other girls have to work hard to help her overcome the phobia. the Fabulous Lives Of Bollywood Wives it is, in a sense, a gender-reversed reality TV version of the frivolous bromances produced by post-designer Bollywood cinema. The points of conflict in the series, more or less the way things generally are in a Karan Johar animator, lack depth.
Probably the most interesting male character in the series is Samir Soni, a man who frankly admits that he has no social skills and has no patience for Bollywood parties. When he agrees to accompany his wife to a party, he wants to sneak out early. The glare of advertising is obviously not to everyone’s liking.
In addition to the Bollywood Wives Club, the focus is squarely on members of the Karan Johar clique who, whenever the opportunity presents itself, talk about the hard work that children born into the industry have to do to hold on to what they have. . inherited, which implies that the accusations of nepotism directed at the big Bollywood fans are unfounded. And then we see Ananya Panday and Shanaya Kapoor blatantly extolling their ties to the power centers of the industry.
Fabulous Lives Of Bollywood Wives Review: A still from the show (courtesy of YouTube)
Around a pool, the four women have the opportunity, as the Bollywood A-listers were in Koffee with Karan, to tell us who among the current generation of Bollywood male stars is the sexiest. Her response is unanimous and Neelam says she would forfeit her pay if she was cast opposite the actor in her comeback film. You scratch my back and I scratch yours – that’s the name of the game here. It’s not a particularly good show.
the Fabulous Lives Of Bollywood Wives It offers no meaningful glimpses (this is not a failure, but an obviously deliberate choice) into the lives of stars and their families in a demanding and unforgiving film industry where those with the correct last names are like cats. They have nine lives.
Maybe more. And that is the phenomenon that the series does not hesitate to celebrate. I like or agglomerate.
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