This family may not be happy in the beginning, but you know there’s going to be a happy family shot in the end. This might be the new-age family drama, but the message is still the one Bollywood has drilled into us all these years – it’s all about loving your family.

Kapoor & Sons walks the tightrope between traditional Bollywood melodrama and a more evolved variant of the same, but its balance is all over the place. As a genuine tearjerker, I found it too superficial; as a study of characters, it felt a little incomplete. All I took away was a handful of warm and fuzzy moments. In most of them, a real-life Kapoor was present.

It’s a ticking time bomb, but one that fizzles out in the end.

Kapoor & Sons is hilarious, heartwarming and heartbreaking rolled in one. It does not wear its social conscience on its sleeve, but make no mistake about this: it has one. This is a disarmingly entertaining, thoughtful film that evokes a fuzzy feeling of warmth. It left me with wet cheeks, a smile on my face and a chuckle welling up in my throat at the memory of Daadu.

Kapoor & Sons is an entertaining film for the youth and the families, mainly of the cities, and for the multiplex-frequenting viewers. It will not be able to do much in the single-screen cinemas and in small centres but its business in the cities and multiplexes will be big enough to make the film a hit. As it is, around 70% of the total investment has already been recovered from non-theatrical sources (satellite, music and Internet rights).

Watch Kapoor & Sons for Alia Bhatt‘s naughty, funny moments, for Rishi Kapoor‘s hilariously perfect acting, for Sidharth Malhotra and Fawad Khan‘s brilliant performances. But more importantly, watch it to see a drama that is packed with emotions and tiny heart-melting moments that are sure to leave you with a smile and a hazy view. Make sure you go with your family at least once.  

Like Piku, Batra brings the family, parent-child relationship under the scanner in Kapoor & Sons but he doesn’t quite rebel against or throw away the construct entirely. He questions the family only to reassert its primacy.

Strong performances and charming characters compensate for a lack of depth and acuity in Shakun Batra’s movie.