So near, yet so Farah

Farah Khan hasn't made a movie in years. But her films are enjoying a second life, a second look. Fans are begging her to return. Could her flavour of clever/camp/crazy be just what Bollywood needs to fix itself?

- Kritika Kapoor

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.

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