Hope Aur Hum is a well-intentioned film. It has its heart in the right place and manages to seep you in its own nostalgia and think of things beyond the film. But there’s something that doesn’t quite make it through. The message of this family drama stays with you but the film, unfortunately, might not.

102 Not Out is a simple sweet watch and offers many little moments. And it is moments like these that warm your heart. It’s the kind of film your parents and grandparents would relish on a Sunday afternoon with each thing simplified at its best. The simplification, however, is subject to personal beliefs and experiences.

So while Rani strikes the right chord and gets the intricacies of her hiccups right, the film doesn’t elevate much from its hiccups and remains only partly engaging.

There are some laughs, especially courtesy Ferrell with Lithgow and Ferrell with Wahlberg, while Gibson plays the same brash alpha-male he made a career out of, but ultimately the jokes, plot lines and characters are all derivative of much better productions that lack the moral ambiguity of this particular film. There are frequent allusions to our modern obsession with technology and social media, a la Black Mirror, and the usual product placement of gifting ideas that punctuate films that release this time of the year.

The cinematography works as an ode to Madhab’s story. It lay bares the despondency of debt-ridden farmers while simultaneously showing an accurate portrait of these parched lands. The best part of the film perhaps is that it doesn’t intend to answer or preach on the difference between right and wrong but instead leaves you with plenty to think about. Unsettling but rightly so.