It’s not every day that you discover Akshay Kumar essaying a character that isn’t your typical Akshay Kumar. This is precisely why the Bachchan Pandey trailer, which was dropped today, drew us in.
Although it’s interesting to watch a star-studded trailer, we couldn’t wrap our heads around the same filthy deeply-entrenched problems that this 4-minute trailer was capable of delivering.
And here we thought Bollywood had moved on from these themes at least in 2022! We address the things that didn’t sit well with us based on what we saw in the trailer. Keep reading to find out.
1. Akshay Kumar is yet again paired with an actress 20 years younger to him.
Although this is critically troubling, we can’t pretend to be surprised anymore. Akshay Kumar, in a slew of his previous films, has been paired with an actress almost half his age. And this time, it’s Bachchan Pandey, where Jacqueline Fernandez (36) as Sophie, plays Akshay (54) aka Pandey’s ‘mehbooba’. Casting super young actresses as Akshay Kumar’s love interest, at this point, has become an obvious problematic flaw in all his films.
2. Casual racist slurs that are intended to be ‘funny’.
Our excitement to spot Pankaj Tripathi in the trailer was instantly robbed away when he casually passed filthy racist comments. For the sake of ‘jokes’, he refers to people as safed patthar, kaala patthar, and granite. Merely listening to these feels nauseating. The writers of such films urgently need to give up on making individuals of varying skin tones the brunt of the jokes.
3. Stuttering is used as a device to add comic value.
Once and for all, stammering is a speech disorder and exploiting it as a ‘joke’ to cash on is a disturbing idea. Sanjay Mishra, a notable supporting actor is also spotted in the film’s trailer who is mocked by Prateik Babbar’s character simply because he stutters while talking. If that wasn’t terrible enough, he’s also known as ‘buffering chacha’ for all the wrong reasons you can think of. It takes us back to Golmaal, India’s most famed comedy film series, which has a character whose disability itself is used as the punchline.
Just a reminder, it’s 2022, the jokes weren’t funny then and they aren’t funny now.