Bollywood has a new ritual: baptise every star‑kid with a saccharine love story, throw in a dependable outsider to give the illusion of depth, and hope the audience is too dazzled to notice the rot. Aankhon Ki Gustakhiya is the latest—and laziest—offering in this tired prayer to the nepotism gods. From its eye‑roll‑inducing title to its hollow trailer, the film looks less like a heartfelt romance and more like a textbook case of “audience ki aankhon mein dhool”.
The trailer, directed with mechanical precision by Santosh Singh, recounts the entire plot in three noise‑filled minutes: meet‑cute, montage, misunderstanding, rain‑soaked reunion—tick, tick, tick. There’s no spark, no surprise, just a sense of déjà vu so strong you can practically taste the stale popcorn. Even the colour palette feels recycled: sugary pinks, syrupy yellows, gauzy lens flares straight out of a 2008 TV soap.
Enter Shanaya Kapoor, Bollywood’s latest beneficiary of surname privilege. Her screen presence is wafer‑thin; her expressions range from blink‑and‑you’ll‑miss‑it smile to blank stare. One gets the feeling even she can’t bear watching herself emote; half the shots show her eyes bashfully closed. Yet the PR machine insists she is “refreshing”, as if freshness can be measured in hashtags.
The real heartbreak is Vikrant Massey. Fresh from nuanced turns in 12th Fail and Cargo, he has earned a reputation for carrying small films on his shoulders. Here, though, those shoulders slump under the weight of formula. During the trailer launch he gamely declared he had “learnt so much” from Shanaya—a line so transparently desperate it drew snickers in the press gallery. Vikrant’s fan‑base can only wonder why an actor celebrated for integrity has hitched himself to this cardboard carriage.
Bollywood used to give us romances that lingered: Jab We Met’s spark, Hum Aapke Hain Koun’s warmth, even Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi’s awkward charm. Today we’re force‑fed prettified emptiness like Dhadak, Love Aaj Kal (2020), and now Aankhon Ki Gustakhiya. The industry keeps betting that familiar packaging plus a famous surname equals box‑office gold. But audiences are waking up; the social‑media backlash is already louder than the film’s syrupy soundtrack.
If Bollywood truly values its viewers, it must stop playing peek‑a‑boo with our eyes and start nourishing our brains and hearts again. Until then, we’ll keep getting trailers like this—pretty, predictable, and pitifully pointless.