Volunteers from our Squad for Change community were invited to watch and review the movie ‘102 Not Out’ and here are their reviews!
Ketan Nanda
‘102 Not Out’ is a well-crafted family comedy that reminds us to live life to the fullest every moment and showcases that there is no point living with negative thoughts, indifferent people and sour memories.
The movie further reinforces that our happiness lies within ourselves
and is not dependent on others, that we cannot control what others
may do but we can control what we can do. It later reiterates that life is temporary, so one shouldn’t be selfish, and try and make a difference in
other people’s lives.
The Movie showcases, two people of old age with very different
perspective on their lives, where one is younger at heart and accepts
death peacefully and till then wants to enjoy his life to the fullest, and
before dying, wants his son to leave his past behind and forget about
his own son, who abandoned him and went to the USA, while he had to
endure his wife passing away from Alzheimer’s. The dad, portrayed by
Mr. Amitabh Bachhan, gives different tasks to the son throughout the movie, and teaches him a valuable life lesson with each one of those
tasks.
It is a very refreshing movie and portrays a very important message;
that one should live life to the fullest. It also shows us the different obstacles and challenges that our elders have to go through in their old age, and makes us want to talk to our own grandparents more as well.
Anshika Mishra
102-year-old Dattatraya Vakharia (Amitabh Bachchan) and his 75- year-old son Babula Vakharia (Rishi Kapoor) are totally opposite. While Dattatraya is enjoying life to the fullest, his son has accepted his old age and living a plain life. While Dattatraya wants to live for 16 more years, Babulal is certain that he will not live up to that long. Fed up with this lifestyle Babulal is living in, Dattatraya decides to change him and bring back the old, joyful Babulal and for doing so he sets conditions that Babulal has to complete or he will be sent to an old age home.
This film portrays not only the father-son relationship but also how an old man lives vs how an old man should live. Babulal is stuck in his past and has set time for everything – his weekly visits to the doctor even though he is completely fine, his 14-minute shower routine.
Dattatraya transforms him into an easy-going, life – enjoying person. The director focuses on creating small happy moments instead of scenes that may culminate with a blast. It is a light comedy movie and definitely an old school one. It surely becomes emotional towards the end, but it does provide a happy ending.
102 Not Out’s heart is dynamically in the right place. The film knows it’s domain and the emotions it wants to evoke in the watcher’s mind.
It is best enjoyed with family. The ease with which the characters develop a relationship is surely amazing. There are parts where the emotions run high, but it doesn’t get too overwhelming.
It’s the kind of movie that tells you to live your life to the fullest even when you’re old. The inner kid in you should always be alive and joyful. And as they say Age, of course, is just a number.
Manya Garg
102 Not Out movie is based on a Gujarati play, an unusual story of father and son. Amitabh Bachchan playing a 102-year-old wanting to break the oldest-man-alive record, and Rishi Kapoor plays his sad and grumpy 75-year-old son. The father is a happy go lucky type of person whereas his son is a rigid stuck-up kind of person.
Dattatraya Vakharia (Amitabh Bachchan) wants to break the record of a man who lived 118 years. He gives two options to his son Babulal Vakharia (Rishi Kapoor) to either leave his home and live in an old age home or to change himself into a happy and delightful person by agreeing to his conditions/terms.
In this way, he wants to teach his son “to enjoy life, be independent and live a long life”. As Babulal starts to fulfil these conditions, he becomes more and more excited and starts enjoying everything.
Post interval, many scenes are full of emotions. The sequence where
Dattatraya narrates a terrible ordeal from their lives is heart- wrenching but also one of the best sequences of the film. Later it is revealed that Dattatraya had a brain tumour and he did not have much time to live. He just wanted to change Babulal and the old age home and breaking the record was just a set-up. The climax is clap worthy.
The heart goes out to Babulal, who is under the thumb of his domineering father at all times and develops a brain of his own very late in the day. Daddy knows best, even when he is over a hundred.
This film will be immortalized as a father-son love story in the history of Bollywood. The way Amitabh Bachchan takes care of his son, even at such an old age shows that parents can never think ill for their kids or do wrong to them. No matter how worse behaviour their kids have with respect to them, their dedication to their children never dies. Old age is second childhood. You feel like a kid again, dependent, ignorant and scared. At the same time, you woo death. You don’t want to bump into troubles, you don’t want to understand the logic, and you don’t want to go beyond your capabilities.
Interestingly, the film shows if the parents reciprocated the behaviour done to them by their kids like sending them to old age homes when they grow old, the kids retaliate in abuse. The other aspect of being old is the wait and preparation for death. In the Indian psyche, there seems to be a disconnect between the years of active living and that of passive living. This may have its roots in the Hindu social organisation of Ashram Vyavastha.
The street scene at the end is fantastic too. I feel that there are some scenes where characters are happy and celebrating but as an audience,
we get tears in our eyes. Overall, it is a must-watch movie.
A delightful experience of 102 minutes.
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