Review of Om Shanti Om, directed by Farah Khan

I’m only a casual Bollywood fan, so I don’t really know some of the biggest movies in the industry (minus some of the classics from the sixties, I somehow know most of those), but I do know who the current stars are in Hindi cinema.

I was in Seattle with my dear friend when we found ourselves sitting on the couch trying to figure out what to do (we weren’t big fans of Seattle, to be honest, when you’re a broke graduate student trying to find good deals and stuck in the Midtown area). And so, on that day, I impulsively signed onto my Netflix account and landed on Om Shanti Om.

My friend had never seen a Bollywood movie before now, so this was her introduction to the genre. She was so new to it that she had no idea who Shah Rukh Khan was before this moment, and now when I tell her about Khan’s 2000s and latest movies, she says she’s going to watch them.

We both like to watch movies ironically for the plots, and I will say I this was the perfect movie to watch together. She kept providing the most entertaining commentary throughout due to the sheer amount of confusion she had for Bollywood tropes.

Onwards with the review!

When a young man finds his fate tied with an actress, a tale of revenge and reincarnation begins.

Our main character in Om Shanti Om is Om, a wannabe Bollywood actor in the seventies who shows up to film sets in the seventies with his best friend. His mother is a widow and supports his dreams, but they both make fun of Om because he’s absolutely smitten with a young rising actress, Shanti, and he goes to talk to her billboard in town due to how big his crush is.

This leads him to sneaking into one of her film premieres, where he meets her on the red carpet, and Om manages to embarrass himself multiple times over the course of the evening. The ironic part is this actually is pretty charming for Shanti.

Om and his friend, Pappu, continue to try and land extra bits on the Hindi movies filming around town. When Om is on the same set as Shanti, the director makes a cruel decision to leave a fire burning around Shanti as she cries for help.

This is Om’s chance, and he rescues her as the flames grow closer to his beloved star. Shanti is obviously extremely grateful for him, as he saved her life, and he ends up lying to her and claiming he’s a well-known Tamil actor with wealthy connections. He is not, but she believes him.

The two continue to spend more time together, falling in love, but Om overhears a heartbreaking conversation where he discovers Shanti and a producer in town, Mukesh, are actually married. Shanti reveals in that conversation she’s pregnant with their child, and, another night, Mukesh takes Shanti to the set of her upcoming movie Om Shanti Om.

At the same time, Om comes looking for her, but discovers Mukesh has doused the floor in kerosene and lit the set on fire with Shanti locked inside. He tries to come inside and rescue her, is stopped by Mukesh’s henchman, and fails in saving his beloved Shanti.

After being thrown backwards by an explosion, Om is hit by the car of prominent actor and dies. The actor is heading to the hospital as his wife is in labor, and when they give birth, the son turns out to be a reincarnation of Om.

As he grows up and becomes a celebrated actor whose name everyone knows, he doesn’t remember his past life, but has an irrational fear of fire. Om’s widowed mother keeps trying to talk to him, as she believes he is her son, and when Om tours the abandoned sets he once worked in during his past life, his memories come back to him.

He returns to his elderly mother and Pappu, then hatches a revenge plan against Mukesh. Mukesh has become a prominent Hollywood producer in the years that have passed, and when Om meets him in his reincarnated body, he convinces Mukesh to make a movie with him.

He decides the setting should be the set that burned down all those years ago, and he starts to look for a girl that looks like Shanti. The girl is nothing like Shanti, upsetting Om, but he continues the operation of haunting Mukesh. With the help of the actual ghost of Shanti, they are able to successfully (and accidentally murder) haunt Mukesh for his sins.

Overall Thoughts

Om Shanti Om truly is an homage to all the classic Bollywood movies and tropes. It’s got so many of the themes indicative of Hindi cinema stuffed inside of its run time, and some excellent song and dance numbers.

The one song number when they recount all of Mukesh’s sins at the launch party for the movie via musical theatre format is absolutely brilliant—that’s how I would want to go out (if I had to) as a villain.

Like many Bollywood movies, I think it’s a little too long, and we ended up briefly fast forwarding in some sections of the movie. The acting was well done for the dramatic effects, and the one scene with basically every Bollywood star randomly appearing in a dance party was hilarious.

Om Shanti Om is now one of my favorite Bollywood movies if we’re going to be honest.

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