Kapoor & Sons (2016)

I’m not going to say I wasted $9.50, but I would rather have watched Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu, which is also written and directed by Shakun Batra, is also really annoying, but is on netflix and has Kareena Kapoor. Plus better songs.

So this is a family drama. I refuse to call it a melodrama, despite the sheer density of familial lies, resentment, and tragedy in this movie, because I like melodramas. Melodramas have big stories, evoke big feelings, and take you away into a world where even the mundane is full of dramatic significance. This is normal drama, just a hell of a lot of it. Dysfunctional families just don’t do it for me, or maybe I can only stand one per year and I already watched Dil Dhadakne Do. I can’t really fault the acting (well, maybe Sidharth Malhotra’s) but boy was this long and really overwritten.

The Kapoor family patriarch Dadu (Rishi Kapoor in way overdone old age makeup) is unappreciated by his son and daughter-in-law, but still fun and cheerfully lewd. When he has a heart attack he reveals that his last wish is for a happy family portrait, so his grandsons Arjun (Sidharth Malhotra) and Rahul (Fawad Khan) travel home to India. Arjun is a bartender and aspiring novelist while Rahul is a successful novelist and entrepreneur. Rahul is favored by his parents, but secretly struggles with his writing and hides the fact that he doesn’t have a girlfriend in London, but a boyfriend. (And so we manage to have an entire subplot about a family finding out their son is gay without ever, in the entire movie, saying the word “gay”.) Their parents’ marriage is in trouble and only worsens with the arrival of their sons. All together, the family fights a lot. A whole lot.

Arjun escapes and meets Tia (Alia Bhatt) at a house party, and smooches her during a game of spin the bottle. People still play spin the bottle? Are we supposed to believe 30 year old men do? Because that’s a little weird. Tia is just there as a useful conduit for brotherly jealousy and Alia doesn’t have much to do, cute as she is. The family throws Dadu a party, and it almost seems like they’ll begin to repair their relationships, but the morning of the titular family picture everything explodes.

So Arjun finally calls out his brother for stealing his novel, but it turns out that it was actually Mom who suggested his ideas to Rahul, but after she finds out Rahul is gay, she fights with him and he tells her that Dad is in fact having the affair she suspected and this all leads to a giant family argument and the picture falling apart and if that’s not enough let’s HIT SOMEONE WITH A TRUCK.

So. If you want to watch Fawad Khan and Ratna Pathak Shah in a dysfunctional family, there’s Khoobsurat*. For a family drama where the love interest is collateral damage to other people’s problems, watch Dil Dhadakne Do. If you like Rishi Kapoor being creepy, you’ve got an entire decade to flip through. (That’s not fair. Rishi Kapoor here is delightful.)

*which is totally enjoyable even for a manic pixie dream girl princess romance with zero character development