Khan plays Bauua Singh, a little person from a wealthy family in the city of Meerut. Bauua is supposed to be a good-natured scamp, but we don't initially see much of his good nature; he spends most of his time dreaming of Bollywood actress Babita Kumari (Katrina Kaif) and spending money on his assorted hangers on, including his trusty sidekick Guddu (Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub.)
It's only a minor plot point, but Bauua also has a special gift: with a flick of his finger, he can turn any star into a shooting star. This is intended as a charming bit of magical realism, so nobody realizes that he possesses a destructive power that would make the Dark Phoenix weep with envy, a power that operates over interstellar distances and (given the speed of light) possibly through time.
Despite his incredible cosmic power, Bauua is still a bachelor. At a matrimonial agency he sees a photo of Aafiya Yusufzai Bhinder (Anushka Sharma), a beautiful and brilliant scientist and mathematician who works for that famous American space agency, the NSAR. (NASA? Never heard of it.) It's not until he arranges a meeting that he realizes that Aafiya has cerebral palsy and is confined to a wheelchair. They fail to hit it off in spectacular fashion, ending with Bauua being bodily thrown out of the school she's speaking at. Humiliated, Bauua crashes another of her speaking engagements, makes a scene, and is thrown out and humiliated again.
So Bauua changes tactics. He mounts a full-fledged "played by Shah Rukh Freaking Khan" charm offensive, and manages to win her . . . friendship, initially. But the relationship develops over the course of a few months, until they finally spend the night together. And then he drops her.
A month later, Bauua returns home to find Aafiya's parents, there to arrange his and Aafiya's marriage. Bauua's parents are naturally thrilled, and before the kids can really object, the match is fixed. On their wedding day, after a tense conversation with Aafiya, Bauua runs away, and winds up in the entourage of his idol, Babita Kumari, who turns out to be deeply troubled and trapped in a life of meaningless excess, as well as a dysfunctional relationship with Bollywood star and smug jerk Aditya Kapoor (Abhay Deol.) Bauua helps Babita with her issues, and she helps him realize what a colossal jackass he's been, so it is now time for the "win Aafiya back" portion of the movie.
Winning Aafiya back means travelling to America and interrupting yet another one of her speaking engagements. She tells him to go to hell, and Bauua can see that a musical number is not going to cut it this time, so instead he volunteers for the upcoming manned mission to Mars, because as everybody knows, astronauts are selected through an open audition process.
Zero was a box office disaster, but it's really not the worst movie I've ever seen. It's not even the worst Shah Rukh Khan movie I've ever seen! Instead, it's a bit of a curate's egg - good in parts. The cast is fantastic, especially Sharma, who clearly poured her heart and soul into this role. While the relationship between Bauua and Aafiya is definitely unhealthy, it is actually easy to tell what they see in each other. The movie has one really good song. And representation matters, even if it's this clumsy.
But that leads me to the biggest flaw in the movie. There is no reason for Shah Rukh Khan to be in this film. His performance is fine, mind you, but there are many actors in India who are little people, and without the pressure of star casting this could have been a life-changing role for any of them. Perhaps because of the pressure of being a Shah Rukh Khan movie, Zero keeps striving for epic, when the actually interesting part is the real human connection between two flawed but compelling people who don't look anything like your typical Bollywood couple.
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