Do you remember Rebecca Black’s ‘Friday’? The song that got famous for having more dislikes on its YouTube video than likes. It’s a song that a friend of mine uses to terrorise people. There is no doubt that it’s a really bad number, can’t think of any English song that’s worse, at least not right now.

But guess what? Now there is a Bollywood movie trailer that has almost double the number of thumbs down on it than Friday. As of 13th August 2020, Friday has 3.7 million dislikes.

But an upcoming movie called “Sadak 2” has raked up 6 million + dislikes and I am guessing the number is only going to keep increasing by the day. Some news reports suggest that its trailer video is now the most ‘disliked’ video in YouTube India. So why all the hate surrounding the trailer? Especially when it’s not as spectacularly bad as a lot of other trailers.

Here’s the thing – right now, there is a lot of hate going around against star kids who made their way into Bollywood due to their sheer connections with people in the industry. This is because of the recent death of a Bollywood star called Sushant Singh Rajput. Most people blame ‘insiders’ in the industry for trying to sideline the actor who was self-made and didn’t come from a Bollywood family. So there is a massive wave of hate against those who are considered products of nepotism. Fans of Sushant Singh Rajput are spearheading smear campaigns against upcoming films that have actors who belong to famous film families.

Unfortunately for ‘Sadak 2’, the entire lead cast is a product of nepotism. All the three lead actors have strong industry connections –

1. Sanjay Dutt is the son of famous veteran actors Sunil Dutt & Nargis.

2. Alia Bhatt is the daughter of famous director Mahesh Bhatt, who is also the director of ‘Sadak 2’.

3. Aditya Roy Kapur is the brother of famous producer Siddharth Roy Kapur.

While the nepotism is strong in this one, it doesn’t help that the trailer was pretty shitty too. If one scrolls down the comments of the video on YouTube, you will see a lot of people urging others to hit the ‘dislike button’ too. So there are folks who might have not even seen it at all and just went on YouTube with the sole purpose of giving it a BIG thumbs-down.

Honestly, I don’t give a damn about who is starring in the film, as long as I like the trailer, I’ll go watch it. So I am going to write about what I thought of the trailer and that doesn’t include any sentiments attached to the choice of cast.

The trailer starts with off with a scene from the 1991 film ‘Sadak’, so there is a flashback to a young Sanjay Dutt driving a taxi and mouthing some dialogue about how love can turn even trash into gold. (How about ‘love can mistake trash for gold’? makes more sense right?)

I haven’t seen ‘Sadak’ which was one of the biggest hits of its time, so I have no idea what the hell is going on. And the trailer doesn’t help explain much either.

Suddenly, there’s Alia Bhatt, who randomly mentions fake babas (spiritual gurus) and drops at Dutt’s shop because she has booked a cab to go meet her boyfriend. If this film is supposed be in the current times, it makes no sense for a young girl to book a cab from an obscure shop over an app based service. Guess the writers are still stuck in the 90s.

Anyway, for a brief 20 seconds, the trailer wasn’t all that bad, Alia & Aditya actually make a good-looking onscreen couple. The little romantic moments between them are cute & cosy.

But the unexplained craziness begins in the second-half. You have a Cleopatra type God-man living in an opulent mansion & making ominous predictions about deaths. He looks more like a millionaire rapper high on drugs, than a ‘godman’ or whatever it is that he is supposed to be –

A bunch of baddies are introduced. Basically there is some danger to Alia and her boyfriend and Dutt the driver decides to help them, for no reason, except that his dead girlfriend/wife will judge him in heaven for not helping a young couple in need. L-O-L.

We are stuck in the 90s? Yes.

Also the acting of both Alia Bhatt and Sanjay Dutt in the second half of the trailer didn’t seem very convincing. Everything is just too random and makes no bloody sense in the second half. I had a frown on my face throughout, wondering ‘what the hell is going on?”.

And that is why I disliked the trailer – it’s random as fuck. But I have seen worse.

(P.S – I originally wrote a version of this post on the Q&A site Quora)