102 Not Out
Year: 2018
Director: Umesh Shukla
Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Rishi Kapoor, Jimit Trivedi

Director Umesh Shukla seems to have a special penchant for making movies based on Gujarati plays. After one such successful bid- OMG (2012), he now takes up Soumya Shah’s Gujarati play 102 Not Out for a Bollywood movie transformation. Getting stalwarts Amitabh Bachchan and Rishi Kapoor in the lead roles is nothing short of a casting coup. The two greats are acting together 27 years after their last rather forgettable film Ajooba, which had sort of undone the magic they had unleashed earlier in films like Kabhi Kabhie, Amar Akbar Anthony and Naseeb.

What’s the plot?

A 102- year old full of beans father (Amitabh Bachchan) decides to banish his 75 year old grumpy son (Rishi Kapoor) to an old-age home. The reason? The father doesn’t want his son’s perpetual negativity to come in his way of beating a Chinese man’s record of being the oldest man on the planet! If the shocked son wants to avoid old-age home, then he would have to complete certain oddball tasks his crazy pop has set for him! What exactly does the whimsical centurion father want from his septuagenarian son? And why?

Verdict

Handling old age; father-son bonding; empty nest syndrome; selfish NRI children- 102 Not Out touches down upon many relevant social themes. Age is just a number; live life with positivity and without clinging on to the past baggage is the message. The movie adaptation seems stagy and could have been better scripted-directed. To his credit, the director keeps the light-hearted humorous tone throughout and consciously avoids melodrama.

Amitabh Bachchan thoroughly enjoys himself as the quirky, chirpy old man; although, it is not one of his best roles. First of all, he never looks like a 102 year old! On top of that, having been handed some ordinary comic material, he errs on overdoing it a bit. In contrast, he is simply brilliant in the few dramatic scenes that he gets.

Rishi Kapoor is superb as a grouchy son and a touchy father. His is an understated, layered performance that stays in mind.

As the father-son’s dim-witted Man Friday Jimit Trivedi delivers a passable, patchy performance. The only area where he definitely outshines the two greats is in sounding and seeming like a true-blue Gujju, since both, Big B and Rishi never get that aspect right!

All in all, 102 Not Out is a watchable dramedy thanks to two wonderful performers (and a bitter-sweet look at old age problems!) but it is limited by a shallow script and caricaturish characterization.

Rating

3 stars