Enter the Joharaverse.

 Karan Johar didn't write or direct Nadaaniyan (2025), but he did produce it, and the film strives to capture the Karan Johar vibe, with young love, family drama, ludicrous misunderstandings, buckets of tears, and an appearance by Ms. Briganza (Archana Puran Singh), the pretentious English teacher with a heart of gold from Johar's debut movie, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai.

 

Ms. Briganza is now Mrs. Briganza-Malhotra, which means that she finally managed to marry the goofy college principal played by Anupam Kher in KKHH, and good for them.  She is now the principal of Falcon High, a high school which is so prestigious and exclusive that the students don't have to wear uniforms.  Pia (Khushi Kapoor) is one of the wealthy students at Falcon, and she has a problem: her friends Sahira (Aaliyah Wureishi) and Rhea (Apoorva Makhija) aren't speaking to her for a range of fairly stupid reasons, but mostly because Sahira has a crush on the overbearing Ayaan (Dev Agestaya), and they assume that Pia is secretly dating him because he's been sending her a stream of pushy text messages which she never replied to.  Ayaan claims that yes, they are an item (they are not) and when Ayaan and her friends pressure her in the hall, Pia claims that she can't be dating Ayaan because she already has a boyfriend who is really cool and lives in Canadashe's just not ready to introduce him yet.

Of course, now she needs a fake boyfriend.  And after several false starts, she discovers Arjun (Ibrahim Ali Khan), a driven scholarship student with anger issues who stands out from the rest of the student body because is father is merely a doctor.  Arjun has plans, plans which include law school and eventually launching his dream app to make legal services more available to the common man, and to fulfill his dreams he will need money, while Pia is really, really rich, so she convinces him to pose as her boyfriend.

And you can probably guess where this is going.  The fake relationship requires them to spend real time together, and so they get to know each other, become friends, and maybe more?  There's drama along the way, mostly involving Pia's parents Rajat (Suniel Shetty) and Neelu (Mahima Chaudhry), who always wanted a boy to join the family business and didn't seem to realize that girls can also become lawyers, so mostly treat Pia with benign neglect.

Meanwhile, Ayaan finally starts dating Sahira so he can worm his way into the friend group and needle Arjun about being (relatively) poor.  He's unpleasant enough that Pia stands up to her friends to defend her fake boyfriend, and she and Arjun become even closer.  Suddenly she's starting to dream bigger and considering a career in law, and she pressures Arjun to let her join the debate club.  (He's the president, because of course he is.)  

And then everything goes wrong.  The couple attend a Diwali party together, and Arjun is immediately jealous of Pia's family friend Rudra (Meezaan Jafri) and leaves early because they have a big debate tournament, so he isn't there when Pia's family falls apart completely and she and her mother leave to stay at Rudra's ancestral castle.  She misses the debate tournament, and before she can contact Arjun a photograph of her being comforted by Rudra leaks to the press, so when they return to school Arjun angrily reveals the fake boyfriend scheme to the entire school, publicly and utterly humiliating her.  

 

That ought to be the end of it (Rahul never treated Anjali that badly) but this is supposed to be a romantic comedy so of course they're bound to get together in the end, though Piua can't get through her reconciliation speech without pointing out what a terrible idea it is.

A lot of the criticism of Nadaaniyan focuses non the fact that both of the leads have strong family ties to the Bollywood industry - Khushi Kapoor is the daughter of  the legendary Sridevi, and Ibrahim Ali Khan is the son of Saif Ali Khan.  But many of the actors in the industry, including a slew of the current big names, got their start through family connections, and while there is a serious conversation to be had about nepotism in Bollywood I don't think we can hold the star kids responsible for trying to succeed in the industry as it exists.  The kids are fine. Kapoor is appropriately wistful during her narration, and while Khan has room to grow, I've seen Saif Ali's early films and he's a great actor. Now.

No, the real problem with the movie is that nobody is very likable.  Pia is self-absorbed, her friends are awful, her parents are a nightmare, and Arjun is short-tempered and quick to jump to conclusions.  His parents are nice, I guess.

 This is the Karan Johar formula, but it's the wrong Karan Johar formula; it's hyper-competative high conflict Student of the Year rather than warm and fuzzy Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, and I really didn't like Student of the Year.

Ms. Briganza is always a delight, though, and I'm glad she's doing well.