Queen of camp: It’s time for the Farah-aissance
Farah Khan hasn’t made a movie in years. But her clever/camp/crazy films are enjoying a second life. Could they be just what Bollywood needs to fix itself?
Farah Khan’s Tees Maar Khan hit theatres in 2010 – 15 years ago. The reviews were terrible; it still has an IMdB rating of 2.8 out of 10. And yet, right now, GIFs from the movie are all over Instagram. There’s one of Katrina Kaif, popcorn bucket in hand, preening as she watches herself on the big screen. An insta user has captioned it: “Me watching my own Story for the 345th time”. On X, one user who goes by @limjaeseven says he’s writing a thesis on Khan, and is “casually using derrida and foucault to explain tees maar khan”.
Why is a popcorn movie and its avowedly popcorn director suddenly on everyone’s mind in 2025? It could be that Khan — an icon of her time — might have been ahead of her time too. TMK is (as one Letterboxd user describes it) “peak brainrot”, but was made 14 years before the term entered dictionaries. Her 2004 film Main Hoon Na gave us “simping” before the concept existed. Remember Shah Rukh Khan dropping to his knees, violins in the background, every time Sushmita Sen walked by? That’s classic Golden Retriever energy. Khan’s films were camp before we ever paid attention to the Met Gala.
And in today’s era of profit-maxxing, when every film feels like a CTRL+C, CTRL+V of the same plot, song, and bearded actor, when the cleavage is still the punchline, Khan’s films aren’t just enjoying vintage appeal. They’re the disruptor we sorely need. Every day, there are new tweets and Instagram posts begging Khan to come back and fix Bollywood. To bring back humour that’s both silly and self-aware. To tell stories that are smart but also sparkling. We’re in the middle of a Farah Khan renaissance. We’re calling it the Farah-aissance. Don’t @ us.
Extra effort
Khan’s films – she’s only made two others, Om Shanti Om (2007) and Happy New Year (2014) – are preposterous. In TMK, Akshay Kumar plays a conman out to loot a train. He does this by posing as a filmmaker, M “Day” Shyamalan, who is making an Oscar-worthy period film. He fools an entire village and one actor (Akshaye Khanna) into becoming his accomplices. In its time, the story was a not-so-subtle reference to Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire. But businessmen and conmen defrauding the masses via patriotic fervour? It’s giving 2025.
“It is very difficult to write something absurd, and make it believable and funny,” Khan says. So, what feels like blooper-reel energy is actually meticulous craft. Look closer, and you’ll spot the Easter eggs, the inside jokes, and the meta references. Zoom out, and you’ll see them for what they are: Mass-market masala movies.
The current crop of directors aren’t aiming for anything so layered. “It takes time for some actors to get in that zone,” Khan says. “They take a day to acclimatise. Only Shah Rukh Khan gets into it as soon as he learns his lines. Nobody does absurd like him.” His exaggerated South-Indian-Superstar act in Om Shanti Om was inspired from a 1970 film Tarzan 303, that Farah Khan watched as a child. She got him to fight a stuffed tiger in one scene. “He not only committed to the moment, he enhanced it,” says Khan. “The part when he yells ‘You fat cat, you rascal-a cat, naughty pussy’, that’s all improv.”
Controlled chaos
Despite the madness on screen, Khan runs a tight ship. “My shoots, whether it’s a song or scene, are some of the most organised. There is no chaos on my sets. No money is wasted.”
Rewatch the nine-minute song Deewangi Deewangi from Om Shanti Om, which features 31 cameos. Khan says she shot it over six days, getting top names such as Rani Mukerji, Karisma Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Salman Khan, Saif Ali Khan, Rekha, Jeetendra and Dharmendra to show up and dance. “Shooting it felt like a party,” she recalls. Mithun Chakraborty’s arrival caused a near stampede on set. When Govinda turned up 24 hours late, Khan says she “literally grabbed the paper from the AD” and re-planned the shoot schedule herself. Few directors have that kind of pull and power to rework a scene today.
Those who’ve worked with her say Khan cares about everyone having a good time. On set — even for the dance contest Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa, which she judged alongside Malaika Arora and Arshad Warsi last year — everyone sat together for meal breaks. Reels of their tiffin box, packed with mutton biryani, yakhni pulao and kadhi chawal, went viral on Instagram. “This only happens on my shoots, otherwise, everybody runs into their vanity vans,” Khan says.
Masala roast
And at a time when her contemporaries such as Shah Rukh Khan and Saif Ali Khan are launching their kids, Khan has given Bollywood its first nepo chef: Her cook, Dilip Mukhiya. He appears with her on her cooking channel. Their banter is comedic gold. She’ll roast him for fumbling his lines, he’ll snap back about doing all the work.
The series has occasional celebrity guests. And Mukhiya ends up unintentionally flirting with Jenifer Winget (“You smell better than this dish”) or throwing shade at Kajol by calling her a yesteryear heroine. All this as they prepare bharta fry, anda akuri, junglee mutton and galouti kebab. Some of their videos have 7 million views.
The reason it works is because Khan, unlike most film directors, spots talent well and knows exactly what to do with a gem. The world dismissed Rakhi Sawant as a smutty flash-in-the-pan. Khan gave her a role in Main Hoon Na and has brought her on the cooking show. “Rakhi worked her way up from a chawl,” Khan points out. “It’s not easy, with people making fun of you and your English.” Khan was especially struck by Sawant’s work ethic when filming. “If you work hard and you don’t complain, then you have a champion in me.” It’s no coincidence that Sawant is being rediscovered as a camp icon too, one who refused to be cowed down by Bollywood’s snobbery and the media’s sexism.
Khan remembers how her movies were critically panned when they were released. So, it feels like a vindication of sorts that the world is catching up to her work at a time when Bollywood is desperately searching for its identity. And it feels good to know that a generation so quick to cancel a celebrity for a single thoughtless comment, has given her campy movies the thumbs up. In her 2023 blog, Why Om Shanti Om is a Postmodern Masterpiece, writer Aamatullah Rajkotwala views the potboiler as subversive, even political. “The film makes it abundantly clear that it’s a man’s world and a rich man at that,” she says. It also addresses “toxic fan culture, [Bollywood’s] lack of original scripts, nepotism trumping talent, and the celebrity bubble”. It was woke before we learnt to say woke.
Khan knows that young audiences are “dying for my kind of movies”. The internet is hard at work, manifesting a sequel to Main Hoon Na, or a new unhinged Farah Khan story. “Whenever it happens, it’ll happen. I’m not going to stress over it.”
Dreaming big
Farah Khan, who’s directed the biggest names in Bollywood, isn’t above some fangirling. In an Insta post featuring Tom Cruise balancing on a chair, there she is in the comments: “I want to be that chair TOMMMMMM”. Did Cruise ever reply? “No! I’m waiting for him to.” Why Tom Cruise? “He’s great eye candy, of course. But he’s also a fab actor, who does his own stunts. Have you ever heard, ‘Tom is drunk and partying’? No! He’s all about the work. That’s what really attracts me.”
Stirring the pot
What’s harder, babysitting triplets or superstars?
The superstars are grown-ups. I don’t have to potty train them. Plus, Salman, Aamir and Shah Rukh are the most chilled-out people. The ones who haven’t yet become a star — those are the irritating ones.
One dance step that’s criminally over- or underrated?
Kartik Aaryan’s footwork. He has to find another body part.
What’s your pop-culture guilty pleasure?
I’m obsessed with Reels — food, Urvashi Rautela, everything. I don’t call them guilty pleasures because guilt means you’re ashamed. I enjoy them. Fully.
What do you hope people will see when they watch your movies 50 years from now?
“Fifty years from now, I’ll be dead. I won’t care. People should look at my work now. Appreciate me now.”
From HT Brunch, Aug 16, 2025
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