Indian families aren't simple places to grow up in. Not only do we have a convoluted family tree because of joint families living together from aeons ago, we also pass down sensibilities via the family way. Children are very often asked questions like - 'who do you love more, your mother or your father?'; 'why can't you be more obedient like your brother?' ; 'why can't you be more soft spoken, like the girl across the street?'. And these are questions that not only have answers drilled deep into young minds, they also imprint behavioral patterns in them. No wonder then that dynastic families of actors are even more complicated - well 'Kapoor and Sons - Since 1921' definitely isn't a movie about film dynasties but it does have Rishi Kapoor - who after a long series of strange characters, plays a lovable nonagenarian in a clan that has its full cupboard of skeletons.
The movie is directed by Shakun Batra and starts up like 'The Darjeeling Limited' does - as a sort of comedy of dysfunctional family members. The nonagenarian having had a genuine heart attack after playing at dropping dead for a long time results in the homecoming, at least for a short while, of his two grandchildren - the perfect son Rahul who is a published novelist living in London and Arjun who aspires to be a successful novelist and is working bars in America while trying to reach his goal. Their mum and dad, played by Ratna Pathak and Papa Kapoor(played by Rajat Kapoor - not of the other Kapoor clan) have their own issues. The sojourn of the grandsons provides a platform for all the actors to gather together on the stage and takes us through what I feel is one of the best comedy dramas of contemporary Hindi cinema.
Shakun Batras innate understanding of characters and typical situations in a family almost feels too good to be true for a Bollywood movie and leaves us highly satisfied even though the acting is a little rough around the edges in the younger department - Siddharth Malhotra and Alia Bhatt seem a little wooden while Fawad Khan(free of the trappings of inane comedies like the earlier movie he did with Sonam Kapoor, the title for which I do not even want to remember) is definitely going places. His angst as a 'perfect son' remains slightly unbalanced on the other end by Siddharth Malhotra's (who for the most part is convincing) overly taut jawed performance of a younger sibling who has always been compared to the elder and cannot seem to catch a break. Alia Bhatt acts as herself for most of the movie but fails to emote in the one crucial scene she is required to. All in all, the direction keeps us engrossed to the point that we don't notice the acting hiccups - mostly.
By stages, 'Kapoor & Sons' leads us down a laugh gallery into dark alleys and then proper melodrama. Where it succeeds is that not one bit of our journey feels strange - there is almost a constant feeling of identification with what the characters are going through. Every relationship needs a lot of work to substantiate it as does every family which inevitably has buried secrets. The difference in this Kapoor family is that the patriarch is not a french beard sporting accented gentleman, the sons are not swaggering mules who think they are imports when in fact they are exports. The characters are for the most part, grounded and identifiable and the location - Coonoor, ties it all down neatly into a movie with verdant highs and shaded lows and tangible middles. Par for the acting being low, I would still rate this one of the best Hindi dramedies of late.
