Picture copyrights: Dharma productions

Kapoor & Sons (Since 1921) – Hindi movie by Shakun Batra
Venue: DT City Centre, Gurgaon
Date: 22nd March, 2016

This is basically “Kapoor and sobs”… all characters have a sob story and it turns out the film is sad in a completely different way.

The film is not just boring but extremely annoying. The overtly western influence comes in the way of connecting with the masses. The characters are not real.

Rishi Kapoor’s makeup looks half done. His voice modulation and tone don’t match a 90 year old man. Kamal Haasan did a fabulous job of looking and enacting a really old man way back in 1996 in “Hindustani”. Talk of following Hollywood standards in Hindi films… huh!

Fawad Khan’s looks didn’t do any good to the film. Half of his dialogues are in English, that too delivered in low volume without opening his mouth…trying to sound like a serious actor? Well, didn’t work. And he’s not the only one who’s acting bad. He’s accompanied by a host of co-stars. Alia Bhatt, Rishi Kapoor and Siddharth Malhotra are equally bad. Siddharth Malhotra is stuck with a single expression that he carried on from “Student of the year” to “Ek Villain” to this film and whats with “Never-took-a-shower-in-my-life” look. The director couldn’t find a better way to make him look like a looser.

The film also suffers from major “Monsoon Wedding” hangover. A bunch of relatives coming together to celebrate something and then skeletons coming out of closets… done to death… and when one of the actors is a common actor the comparison is inevitable. Rajat Kappor should take a break from playing an upper middle class family man… from Monsoon wedding to Bheja Fry to Kapoor & Sons, he is typecast.

The comedy part is also repetitive. Rishi Kapoor’s “lecherous old man” bit went on and on and ceased to amuse the audience right after 5 minutes. Same was the case with the other characters like the body builder friend etc. Music is also average, “Chul” is sure a popular number but rest of the songs have no freshness and we didn’t remember any of the songs after the film got over.

Lastly we did not get the homosexuality angle at all. Again hush tones and the covert lines only in English – it seemed that the script writer couldn’t get himself to write these lines in Hindi. The discomfort of the director with this concept was apparent and the homosexuality bit looked forcefully imposed on the film.

We don’t expect a lot of substance from commercial Hindi cinema. But one hopes for some entertainment from this genre of films which is completely missing from this half baked, not so honest attempt.

Rating: YAWN.