Bollywood icon Shah Rukh Khan uncorks a wildly over-the-top Jekyll-and-Hyde dual turn in this exhausting, bizarre yet watchable action-thriller melodrama. He plays a Mumbai megastar called Aryan Khanna, obviously modelled on himself – and incidentally using genuine footage in which he waves to hordes of screaming admirers from the balcony of his luxury home.
But he also, with the aid of digital effects, plays a creepy lookalike fan called Gaurav, a dopey Delhi guy who owns an internet cyber cafe and wins a local talent contest with his Aryan tribute act. The doppelganger effect is creepy, but it’s not easy to tell how intentional this is. Guarav’s obsessive fan-love turns to fan-hate when he feels his devotion to be slighted and then travels around the world, staging crimes in all the cities where Aryan is on a singing tour, knowing that his erstwhile hero will get the blame.
It could be that Khan has taken inspiration from fan nightmares such as Scorsese’s King of Comedy or Stephen King’s Misery. By casting himself in both roles, Khan could have intended a complex satire of celebrity narcissism. Or he could just be, well, guilty of a fair bit of celebrity narcissism himself. Either way, it’s outrageous and enjoyably absurd.
