Kapoor and Sons since 1921: Reviews and BO Thread - Page 90

#KapoorAndSons collects an IMPRESSIVE $ 2.9 million [ 19.27 cr] in its opening weekend in the international arena. SUPERB!

Happy to prove wrong. Had told KaranJohar on Friday evening that Kapoor&Sons weekend wud close at 25 crore. It actually netted 26.35 crore!!

From SRK's Rahul to Fawad's Rahul in 'Kapoor and Sons', Dharma has finally come of age

The following piece contains spoilers related to the central plot of 'Kapoor and Sons'.

Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, is one of those inexplicable tent-pole films of the 90s. You won't find too many people who openly admit they like the film, but you'll also hardly find anyone who would mind watching the film on TV over the weekend.

Most importantly, even though Dharma was an established production house that had made prior films with stars like Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan, and with directors like Mukul Anand and Mahesh Bhatt, KKHH was the film that put Dharma on the map.

It was blingy and disruptive, changing the way love and romance were depicted in Hindi cinema. It was the first of the films that would go on to build Brand Dharma, the way we know it now. No wonder, then, that to this day, Dharma uses the signature tune from KKHH for its logo.

Yet, Dharma's latest offering, Shakun Batra's sophomore filmKapoor and Sons, is as far removed from Kuch Kuch Hota Hai as possible. It's a milestone film for Dharma, owing to a stark contrast to everything that we, the public, once associated with that name.

The Rahul of Kuch Kuch Hota Hai was a brash man-child who, throughout the film, never seems to know what he wants. His 'ek baar jeete hain, ek baar marte hain' was the kind of jumla that would make even BJP president Amit Shah proud, because barely days later, he ends up gatecrashing the wedding of the woman he made that faux-principled statement about one eternal love to, so he could have another crack at a second marriage.

The Rahul of Kapoor and Sons, on the other hand, is one of the most rock-solid characters to have ever appeared in a Dharma film. He's also gay, but that just happens to be one facet of his personality. He isn't the kind of person who'd make a conservative Gujarati maid freak out, a la Kal Ho Naa Ho. If anything, he goes against every conventional depiction of homosexuality in commercial Hindi cinema.

From using homosexuality as crass comic relief to understanding that we're beginning to see it as just another attribute among thousands of others that makes an individual, this is one welcome step in the evolution of Dharma - the fact that even their Rahul can be gay.

Rahul, though, happens to be just one of the Kapoors from the film. The film is about the Kapoors as a family, and this time, it's really not about loving your parents. On the contrary, Kapoor and Sons takes the Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham tagline, rolls it into a joint and smokes it nonchalantly. Yes, it quite literally does that. One wishes the Raichands of that uber-dramatic magnum opus had discovered cannabis at some point, because they were in desperate need of calming down.

That isn't to say that Batra's film isn't melodramatic, because the film is heavy with emotion, that un-shakeable hallmark of Dharma. But rather than the blacks and whites the ultra-elite Raichands of Karan Johar's second film see the world in, the middle class Kapoors see the world in a plethora of shades. The inevitable push-pull dynamics of every family, particularly one that has millennial adults in it, comes through better than we've ever seen before.

Parents and children, in every family, are schemers. Parents want their children to do all those things they couldn't, and hence try to control and decide every aspect of life. Children, on the other hand, just yearn to break free. K3G showed this with its loud, overdone, thinly-veiled patriarchy. In Kapoor and Sons, it is political. Things get ugly and dastardly, but it hardly ever makes you feel that these situations are inconceivable in real life.

The concept of a dysfunctional family is redundant, because every family is. The superfluous adjective isn't needed at all. Yet, families come together automatically when the need arises. It takes time, it needs old wounds to heal, and there's never the guarantee that new ones won't form. But the smallest unit of society is the most important because it is the first place where in an individual learns to interact with others who aren't like him or her. That is why Kapoor and Sons is more of a family film than Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham ever was.

Batra's film doesn't deviate much from the Dharma ethos of big stars, good visuals, emotional content, memorable music. Yet, in its own way, it marks a new kind of cinema for them; the kind of cinema that makes you wonder what exactly constitutes a happy ending; the kind of cinema that makes you ponder about life iniquities and vagaries. It reminds you that, like people, brands can grow up too; because it seems like Dharma hasn't just come out of the closet, but has also come of age.

http://www.firstpost.com/bollywood/from-srks-rahul-to-fawads-rahul-in-kapoor-and-sons-dharma-has-finally-come-of-age-2688066.html

All right, now here is a definitive list of all the people who under no circumstances can miss out on the chance to watch Kapoor & Sons while they can.

The perfect elder child - Rahul Kapoor (Fawad Khan)

Photo: Koimoi

If you are tired of living your life under the weight of all the expectations that come your way for acting to fulfil the faultless child' tag that you are burdened with and need to break free from the shackles of being eternally considered responsible.

The quintessential black sheep - Arjun Kapoor (Sidharth Malhotra)

Photo: Koimoi

If living forever under the shadow of a successful sibling, always thought off as second best and immature has worn you out.

The estranged couple - Harsh Kapoor (Rajat Kapoor) and Sunita (Ratna Pathak Shah)

Photo: Screenshot

If constant bickering about anything and everything, right down from a leaked pipe all the way up to the serious business of household finances, is slowly eating up your already gone sour relationship.

The happy go lucky daddu (Grandpa) - Amarjeet Kapoor (Rishi Kapoor)

Photo: Screenshot

And finally, if you are a weed-smoking, po*n-watching octogenarian who is acting as the glue for a family slowly crumbling under the load of anger and resentment, then you better stop whatever the hell it is that you are doing right now and go grab yourself a ticket, because nothing can be as bizarrely therapeutic as watching the latest release from Dharma productions, Kapoor & Sons.

It's not just what has been noted above that will help all of you out there in a similar predicament to empathise with in the film. The fact every member of the Kapoor clan has additional skeletons in their respective closets is what makes this dysfunctional family such a curatively riveting watch.

As for the rest of you, I bet you all have personal demons of your own that Kapoor & Sons can surely help you exorcise.

On the face of it, it is a relatively simple drama. Kapoor & Sons is the story of a mercurial Punjabi khaandaan (family) where the ever squabbling pair of ageing parents (Rajat and Ratna) have two sons, Rahul and Arjun who are not on the best of terms with each other. With such strained relationship dynamics this ought to be a recipe for dinner table disaster. But fear not, things aren't coming to a head any meal-time soon since the brothers are living entirely separate lives in London and New Jersey.

The perfect elder one, Rahul, is a bestselling novelist based in London. While the younger one, Arjun, is a struggling writer and a drifter, currently working as a bartender in New Jersey.

Photo: Screenshot

One fine day, the quirky grandfather (Rishi Kapoor) whose favourite prank is playing dead, actually suffers a heart attack and the separated siblings are summoned back home to be by his side and all familial hell breaks loose.

Photo: Screenshot

What follows is a household that's teetering on the brink. Seething with bitterness, yet busy with the daily chores of life - like all dysfunctional families - the Kapoor clan too is always just one dinner-time talk away from reconciliation, but yet at the same time, also just one small act away from completely unravelling into total disintegration.

Photo: Screenshot

But there is still one person who is obliviously enjoying the reunion: daddu. Now having experienced death at close quarters with the attack, the eccentric patriarch of the family has a simple final wish. A family photograph! But amidst all the Kapoor madness, this straightforward desire turns out to be anything but.

Photo: Ndtv

This could be the account of any family anywhere and that is what makes Kapoor & Sons special. The drama is a bitter-sweet slice of your own life. It could have been Sardar & Sons or Khan and Sons. Heck! Put your family name' and Sons, could very well have been the title of the movie for that matter. The tale is fascinatingly engaging despite being rooted in the everyday. You might even describe the plot as wafer-thin but what sets it apart from others is the command that Shakun Batra, the director has on the art of storytelling.

Watching the trailer you could be forgiven for confusing Kapoor & Sons as yet another archaic love troika from the stables of Karan Johar. Despite Alia Bhatt's introduction as a potential trigger to the ticking time bomb that is the edgy Kapoor siblings' relation, the film steers clear of the Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998) and Kal Ho Naa Ho (2003) variety of regressive storytelling.

Photo: Screenshot

Alia plays her hyper, ditzy, blonde girl act yet again and along with Sidharth Malhotra, the duo is the weakest of the lot in terms of acting. It actually might be a little harsh to bracket Siddharth with Alia, mainly because he was saddled with a one-toned character and would have performed a lot better had his younger-brother character been crafted in a layered manner.

But there were no such characterisation issues with the elder sibling, Fawad Khan who owns the movie with his nuanced performance. His range of complex emotions is a total show-stealer and without giving too much away, hats off to him for displaying some real artistic cojones, playing a complex multi-layer character that no other Bollywood actor would have dared touched with a barge pole.

Rajat Kapoor and Ratna Pathak Shah play the almost alienated couple with much ease. The pair manages to showcase love and resentment in a marriage so well, that they will remind you of your own parents.

Photo: Screenshot

Rishi Kapoor with all the prosthetic work, as the slightly naughty, partly grumpy and completely hedonistic grandfather, lusting after Mandakini in a wet sari from Ram Teri Ganga Maili (1985), is the cherry atop this captivating familial cake.

Photo: Screenshot

The choice of setting, the town of Coonoor is a spectacular idea and the cinematography does the hill station full justice by capturing the freshness with frames where you can, well, almost smell the greenery.

Dialogues are as un-Bollywoodish as you can imagine with a lot of subtext and nothing silly, forced or fake about the lines.

Speaking of lines, there is one in Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina regarding families.

"All happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

The dysfunctional Kapoor clan's version of unhappiness has given us an absorbing, heartfelt and curative family drama that might help see our own imperfect families in a better light.

http://blogs.tribune.com.pk/story/33128/kapoor-sons-your-own-dysfunctional-family/