Fabulous Lives Of Bollywood Wives Review: It’s Anything but Fabulous

Cast: Maheep Kapoor, Seema Khan, Neelam Kothari, Bhavana Pandey

Rating: 2 stars (out of 5)

How fabulous you think are the lives of the four cheeky Bollywood wives featured in this bloated Netflix series produced by Karan Johar will depend on how you define the adjective. Looking for thrilling entertainment in the form of a no-holds-barred peek into the rarely seen bowels of the Mumbai film industry? Lower your expectations. Fabulous Bollywood Wives Lives it is far from fabulous. Nor is it passable entertainment or, in a sense, a “guilty” type of entertainment.

Loosely modeled on American reality shows like Keeping up with the Kardashians is The real housewives of Beverly Hills, Fabulous Bollywood Wives Lives will surely find buyers. But it’s not a deep dive. The eight-episode series provides no real insights. When he wants to be flashy, he is fragile. Not even breezy enough to get through the meeting? He peddles lifestyles rather than 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 gave up her acting aspirations for the sake of marriage to Sanjay Kapur and motherhood. Seema Khan, Sohail Khan’s wife, is a busy fashion designer.

Neelam, married to actor and director Samir Soni, had a thriving career in Bollywood 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 been as light. The glitz and glamor of being a part of Bollywood, no matter how tangentially, is what the show emphasizes instead of shining the spotlight on the “mundane life” of the four women as they go about their personal and professional commitments.

Bhavana, Seema, Maheep and Neelam have been friends for a quarter of a century, a fact they flaunt as they drink and dine, attend parties and go on vacations with the girls. But much of what they were made to do in the show doesn’t seem entirely unscripted and is largely wasted on sassy activities and youthful agitation.

Certain parts of the show tell us about their 24/7 role as mothers while keeping fit and running their businesses. But nothing can dispel this feeling Fabulous Bollywood Wives Lives sells us fluff.

We don’t see many of women’s interactions with their husbands or children. The focus is on them worrying about what to wear to a party, get into a big mess about a small point of contention between the two of them on one occasion, and get into a hard to explain conversation when one of the husbands a night out, mentions the pungent millennial MILF theme song.

At one end of the spectrum, Neelam, who turned her back on her acting career many years ago, plans to get back to the center of the action. On the other hand, Shanaya, the nineteen 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 have a one-time whale, the young girl is brutally trolled home. The mother understandably takes it badly. Seek the help of his nephew Arjun Kapoor to overcome the crisis. It’s not easy to be a child star, to have thick skin, advises the actor.

When they’re not planning their next date with Karan Johar – who emerges multiple times and gleefully hijacks the show – they give Maheep the responsibility of putting together a Doha vacation itinerary. Two of the episodes are dedicated to the stay in Qatar. We wonder if this series will be good for Qatar (when the pandemic ends and we can travel freely again) what Zindagi na milegi dobara made for Spain.

Fabulous Bollywood Wives Lives it also connects the fashion label of 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 well as a fascinating SRK like never before. But you have to wade through a bunch of nonsense before the big series finale party.

The show is content to project the quartet as exuberant, fun-loving women who love to be who they are. It is perfectly in order. Some of the most interesting moments occur when the subject of Bollywood careers bottoming out – 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 does his part. .

Chunky Panday refers to the disappointment of not having won a statuette for her performance at Tezaab even as she proudly clings to the best debutante award bagged by her daughter Ananya.

It also tries to generate drama as the girls take off for Doha and the fear of flying reduces Seema to a mental wreck. The other girls have to work hard to help her overcome the phobia. The Fabulous Bollywood Wives Lives it is in a sense an inverted genre television version of the fickle bromances that post-designer Bollywood cinema produces. The points of conflict in the series, more or less the way things generally are in a Karan Johar entertainer, are devoid of depth.

Probably the most interesting male character in the series is Samir Soni, a man who candidly admits that he has no social skills and has no patience for Bollywood parties. When he agrees to take his wife to do something, he wants to leave soon. The flare of advertising is obviously not everyone’s cup of tea.

In addition to the Bollywood Wives Club, the focus is directly on members of the Karan Johar fraternity who, whenever offered to them, talk about the hard work that boys born in the industry have to do to keep what they have. inherited, thus implying that the allegations of nepotism directed at the entrenched big boys in Bollywood are unfounded. And then we see Ananya Panday and Shanaya Kapoor brazenly extolling their ties to the power centers of industry.

Around a swimming pool, the four women have the opportunity, as there were the best in Bollywood Koffee With Karan, to tell us who among the current generation of Bollywood male stars is the hottest. Their response is unanimous and Neelam says she would forgo her pay if she was cast alongside the actor in her comeback film. You scratch my back and I scratch yours – that’s the name of the game here. It is not a particularly exceptional sight.

The Fabulous Bollywood Wives Lives 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 right surnames are like cats. They have nine lives.

Maybe more. And this is the phenomenon that the series has no difficulty in celebrating. Like it or bulk.