102 Not Out

Both Amitabh Bachchan and Rishi Kapoor are obviously having a wanton blast in this one; Amitabh in his continued journey into roles curated for him, and Rishi ensconced in the glory and success of his eventful second innings.

Together on screen after 27 years, the two veterans parent the film by young director Umesh Shukla, as a 102-year-zesty father and his stuck-up, hung-up 75-year-old son living two very separate and yet entwined lives in an old-world bungalow that you would die to own.

Shukla does well to balance the innate pathos and humour of the situation in the film through a revved up screenplay adapted from the famous Gujarati play of the same name.

Both the veterans are impeccable, Rishi more so as a bemoaning father and raging son. However, the uniqueness of the situation on which the film has been constructed needed more humour than it splashes. Not that it, in any way, is sad, slow or ennui-ridden. Far from it! Rather, it celebrates the spirit of life through father Amitabh who puts fun on a premium and lives life king-size.

Son Rishi stunningly portrays the angst of an elderly person whose son has left him to build a life for himself in America with no care in the heart for his father. The stiff shoulders, the watery eyes, the simmering anger, the boredom, the nostalgia, the sorrow, the fear of life at 75 — Rishi encapsulates it all with so much realism that you stand up in applause.

Amitabh, on the other hand, is dazzling as ever. Totally unbothered about his ugly unkempt looks, he is someone you might want to be not just when you are 100 but also when you are young. He celebrates life, laughs away the sorrows — the deepest ones at that — and basically has his wits around him, despite the beyond-senile age he is in.

Shukla does well to decorate emotion and ambience aptly to suit the actors and the era that they are living in. Otherwise a Spartan film, the smoky, hazy environs of an old-world, perhaps Kolkata, enhance the storytelling.

Just four men (two of them beyond 75 years of age) and their life and times, is something Bollywood cinema would call disastrous, unviable and a box office blunder. This film, perched on the following and histrionic acumen of two stalwarts of the industry, is confident that it will make a mark and it does. One only wishes though that there was more to laugh about in this otherwise good film. Perhaps a Rajkumar Hirani may have seen this loophole and corrected it.

But do go and see the not to be missed pairing of AB and RK.

Source: The Pioneer, 6 May, 2018