2023’s Biggest Bollywood Busts: The Top 10 Worst Films

Curious about what didn’t quite sparkle on the big screen this year? Well, buckle up, because we’re diving into the 10 Worst Films of 2023. Yep, these movies missed the mark, whether it was the story flopping or the acting not quite cutting it.

Let’s take a peek at the films that just didn’t hit the right notes in the world of movies this year.

Animal

The only reason Animal and not Adipurush is leading this list of the worst films of 2023 is because there were moments in that “Ramayan weds Bhojpuri B-grade film” that were so inappropriate that they were funny. I found the film’s sadak-chap dialogue, Lord Ram’s bizarre white robe, and the floating, nodding heads of Ravan quite entertaining.

Thus, the repulsive Animal must lead the worst of 2023.

Animal, just to be clear, is not a film about alpha males. It’s a film by and about Beta males who can’t grow out of their school knickers and daddy-do-you-love-me complexes.

The film is like a shrine to the fantasies of infantile men who feel so powerless and invisible without the constant validation of their daddies that the only way they can feel their existence is by inflicting pain on the other.

The Kerala Story

Director Sudipto Sen and producer Vipul Amrutlal Shah’s The Kerala Story is not a film. It’s a tacky piece of propaganda and hatemongering that is also unbearable to watch.

The narrative of the film is a plotted conspiracy that mixes two myths: the idea of “love jihad” and the idea that innocent Hindu girls are the target of deceitful Muslim men and women who seduce them into joining ISIS.

The Kerala Story casts all Hindus as godly men and women bathed in upper caste and vegetarian piety, and all Muslims as crafty conspirators who have nothing to do in their lives except to entice, convert, and then hand over Hindu girls to ISIS. The movie’s premise, its dialogue, and its terrible overacting are an unrelenting assault on eyes, ears, and IQ.

Selfiee

How many times must we suffer the clash of male egos?

Director Raj Mehta, who made Good Newwz and Jugjugg Jeeyo, seems to think that there is no limit to our desire to watch two men trying to humiliate each other over a small misunderstanding that could have been resolved in the very first reel.

Selfiee, a remake of the hit 2019 Malayalam film, is about a fan who wants to take a selfie with a star. But things go so wrong that an epic battle ensues over, yes, a driving license.

The problem with Selfiee is not its silly plot, nor is it about Akshay Kumar being a loud, motormouth jerk on screen.

Selfiee is unbearable and exhausting because it’s not just an elaborate tamasha about the clash of fragile male egos, but because it takes itself seriously and is completely humorless.

Mission Raniganj: The Great Bharat Rescue

Director Tinu Desai’s Mission Raniganj is based on the real-life accident of 1989 in West Bengal, when several trapped miners were rescued by an engineer, Jaswant Singh Gill. It’s an inspiring story about the genius and courage of Gill, who undertook the task of rescuing the miners despite the mine being full of water.

Sadly, in Mission Raniganj, the story of Gill and the miners is sacrificed at the altar of superstar Akshay Kumar.

His Gill is a one-dimensional character—an arched-back, larger-than-life man who is always focused, driven, and, well, dull. While he rescues the miners with a lot of earnestness, the film has time to throw shade at lefty, lazy Bengali officials, but not for any real, believable human drama.

I still get goosebumps when I think of the flooded mine scene from Yash Chopra’s 1979 Kaala Patthar. It had drama that humanized a tragedy.

Desai and Kumar’s Mission Raniganj will be remembered for doing grave injustice to Gill’s great rescue.

Shehzada

For some strange reason, Indian writers and directors have decided that they need to resurrect what we thought was a dead-for-good trope – babies switched at birth.

Thus, director Rohit Dhawan has remade Trivikram Srinivas’ Telugu hit, Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo.

The Telugu film starred Allu Arjun, who made that film mildly entertaining. But we, the Hindi-speaking bechare, are stuck with Kartik Aaryan’s I’m-the-eternal-chichora act yet again.

Shehzada’s dreary plot involves a comatose mummy, a poor man’s dim son growing up with a rich daddy, and a rich man’s bright-brave son dreaming of being rich. In this mix is a predictable love triangle and some bad guys who want to harm the rich daddy.

All of this is just an excuse for Kartik Aaryan to do his usual chichora-panti, again and again.

As he flirts, dances, maros dialogue, and bashes up some bad guys, we are repeatedly treated to Aaryan in slo-mo—sometimes his shirt collar and hair are flying in the air, and sometimes he is just blinding us with his shining teeth.

Tejas

Kangana Ranaut is usually a very good actress. And a Top Gun-esque film with her in the lead should have been an exciting, thrilling joyride. Or, at the very least, it should have been as engaging as Janhvi Kapoor’s Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl.

Sadly, director Sarvesh Mewara’s Tejas is less about Kangana Ranaut playing a pilot on a mission to rescue an Indian spy from Pakistan and more about her dishing out platitudes to burnish her nationalistic credentials.

Even that would have been okay if there had been some depth to the character of a female pilot, with some surround sound of what real life is like for women in the Air Force. But all we get in Tejas are bombastic dialogue like “Bharat ko chedo ge toh…” and so much insubordination, certitude, and desh bhakti from Ranaut’s Tejas that it feels like we are watching a dull, robotic character in a video game.

The Vaccine War

A rhesus monkeys leaps about in a forest. A female scientist talks of Bharat ke scientists and the head of Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), played by Nana Patekar, conjures up Mahabharat’s Arjun and machli ki aankh. A journalist, meanwhile, looks straight into the camera and says, “India can’t do it.”

After living through the hell that was COVID, watching Vivek Agnihotri’s The Vaccine War, which is based on Balram Bhargava’s book Going Viral, is like being tortured by an extended, surreal government PR video that shifts all the angst, tragedy, and frustration to a lab, while reducing the outside world to a soulless, distant entity. Some non-existent enemies are busy conspiring against India. 

How Agnihotri twists reality—by exaggerating one part, invisibilizing another, and creating an enemy—would someday make for a great Black Mirror episode.

Bawaal

There is so much to pick at in director Nitesh Tiwari’s Bawaal that I can’t decide whether the film is boring, stupid, or offensive.

The Jhanvi Kapoor-Varun Dhawan starrer has a very contrived plot that takes us on a journey through Europe to recount the mistakes and atrocities of Hitler and the Third Reich.

But since the real purpose of this history tour is to save the shaadi of a woman who has a medical condition and a man who seems to be a conceited imbecile, one of the most violent chapters of history is repurposed and reduced to a couple’s therapy session so that they can play ghar-ghar.

That is stupid and offensive. And Tiwari, who wrote and directed Dangal, won’t ever be able to live this misadventure down.

Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan

Salman Khan spoilt my Eid this year with Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan.

The film, directed by Farhad Samji, plays out in two artificial sets — one can be called A Happy Neighbourhood in North India and the other can be called A South Indian Haveli.

In the film’s first half, Salman Khan’s hair is long and it’s always flowing in the wind. In the second half, men wear lungis, women wear gajras, and meals are served on banana leaves with papadam.

In the first half, Salman’s lady love, played by Pooja Hegde, saves a Jesus statue from getting wet in the rain, and in the second half, Salman saves her bade bhaiyya and her badi-si family.

In the first half, I wanted to go home. After the second half, I had to be carried home.

Mission Majnu

The fatal flaw of Shantanu Bagchi’s Mission Majnu is that it’s maha boring. So boring that even today, 11 months after its release, watching its two-and-a-half-minute trailer puts me to sleep.

One part of Mission Majnu’s story is inspired by real-life incidents. It involves undercover agents and Pakistan’s plan to build a nuclear bomb. The other part is a love story borne out of Bollywood cliches about lovely, innocent Pakistani girls. The spying bit has no thrill and the romance lacks spark.

Sidharth Malhotra’s looks and acting are in sync with the film’s slow, dreary pace.

Throughout the film, he looks like he had been backpacking for months.