Sure, if you count all the twists and turns, it might seem melodramatic, but the truth is that it is no more dramatic than your life or mine would be if it were to be compressed into a film of 2 hours and 20 minutes.

Panicker’s editing – that it feels like an unscripted reality TV show set in the Kapoor home. The writing and direction of this film are so seamless – aided in no small part by Shivkumar V. The two had earlier hooked up for one of the best Bollywood rom coms of the past decade (also produced by KJo), the unfortunately underrated Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu (2012) starring Kareena Kapoor and Imran Khan. Director Shakun Batra has co-written Kapoor & Sons with Ayesha Devitre Dhillon. It is the good fortune of all those involved – including us, the viewers – that this project is helmed by one helluva team. When so many distractingly good-looking, talented and charismatic people occupy the same frame, it takes one helluva of a story told by one helluva storytelling team to keep the focus on the soul of a film without self-consciously downplaying anyone’s looks, talent or charm. While in Coonoor, they meet a local estate owner called Tia Malik (Alia Bhatt) whose easygoing appeal, impetuous nature and romantic inclinations threaten to further widen the rift between the brothers. Screen grab from youtube.ĭestiny is often merciless. Summoned back to the family home in Coonoor when their Daadu falls ill, the boys are compelled to confront the buried secrets that have kept them apart for so many years.įawad Khan, Sidharth Malhotra and Alia Bhatt in Kapoor & Sons. Rahul is a bestselling novelist based in London while his younger sibling Arjun is a part-time bartender and struggling writer in New Jersey. Producer Karan Johar’s Kapoor & Sons (Since 1921) stars Rishi Kapoor as the patriarch of a clan that includes his constantly squabbling son and daughter-in-law, Harsh and Sunita (played by Rajat Kapoor and Ratna Pathak Shah), grandsons Rahul (Fawad Khan) and Arjun (Sidharth Malhotra). The truth that even regular families are like the Kapoors of this tale – a bloody, wretched mess, filling up an album of a lifetime with break-ups and patch-ups, misunderstandings, regrets and joyfulness, laughter and tears. If, however, we confront the harsh – yet oddly consoling – reality that everyone’s parivaar is as flawed as our own, we might face up to a truth most societies seem to want to ignore. When families such as this one surface in films, the norm is to label them “dysfunctional”.

Kapoor and sons 2016