102 Not Out

Hindi (U)

Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Rishi Kapoor, Jimit Trivedi

Director: Umesh Shukla

Rating: Two stars (out of five)

The centenarian dad never leaves the crease. But his 75-year-old son loves to be a standby.

Finally, at stumps, when the duo makes peace with each other and life, it feels like a slow century with a boundary or two.

Amitabh Bachchan and Rishi Kapoor play some memorable knocks as they reunite on screen after 27 years, but 102 Not Out is just not the innings.

It's an unusual theme — a 102-year-old who is "strictly opposed to dying" and his septuagenarian son, who has possibly fashioned himself after the Grumpy Cat. Bachchan loves risks. Kapoor is plain brusque.

The father wants to set the record of the oldest living man on the planet, but the son refuses to play to the Guinness gallery. So the longevity show takes off with a few laughs, crawls on with some mediocre drama and slumps at the end under its preachy load.

Adapted from a Gujarati play of the same name, Umesh Shukla's movie definitely carries a message. But the dynamism gets lost in translation from the stage to the big screen. With just a handful of characters (three to be precise, the other being Jimit Trivedi, as the naive errand runner), 102 Not Out soon turns dull and droopy.

Rishi Kapoor does a good job as the man who fears changes. He announces that he gets constipation if bathroom tiles are changed, and doesn't get sleep if the blanket is changed. Bachchan, meanwhile, just wants to be alive and be the dad of all eccentricities.

The two players try to raise the game to a fairly good level. Alas, it's an unfavourable pitch.