A wonderful, wonderful premise where an out-and-out mainstream Hindi film revolves around the romantic relationship between two middle-aged people. Both are in their mid-to-late 40s (or probably more, in his case), both are widowed and have grown up kids. Their relationship is just beautifully portrayed, and yes, there's indeed an added value in portraying the romantic affair between two people of their age, making it far more interesting and refreshing than your run-of-the-mill mainstream rom-coms. The big flaw in this film is that despite the modern setting of new-age, urban families, at the end of the day when the relationship between the two leads is revealed, it becomes an issue among the kids, which is weird. I highly doubt any person of their social milieu would consider it wrong. In this regard, a fresh concept goes really downhill by becoming a reversed version of Bobby, where instead of parents, it is the children who oppose the relationship, which doesn't really ring true.
Where the film does score is in the casting of the two leads, Rishi Kapoor and Dimple Kapadia. The two have a perfect chemistry which takes one right back to the magic of their Bobby days in the early 1970s (I think Saagar wasn't a very successful film in this regard). Kapadia is a delight, just a delight all the way - stunning, with extraordinarily commanding screen presence, and always so real. The late Rishi Kapoor was at his very best in the latter phase of his career as a character actor, as it brought the best in him and revealed his true acting prowess otherwise hidden under the fake 'hero' persona that he as every other Hindi film star had to playact. He is just excellent here, and it was just the beginning of many great performances that would follow. Indeed, the pairing of the two is marvelous, as they bring experience, familiarity and great nostalgic value. It really is reason enough to watch this otherwise poor film.
The same cannot be necessarily said about the younger players, whose character are caricatures of selfish youngsters. Instead of making a film that would totally rest on the extraordinary pairing of the two main stars, and there's plenty to rest on considering how good they are, the film succumbs to the commercial film format by enhancing the stories of the young players. In so doing, it shows how lacking in confidence it is and how little it trusts its stars to captivate the audiences. On top of that, the young players are sadly just not up to the mark so instead of contributing to the film with their youthful presence, they actually take away a lot from its credibility and depth and make the entire product quite messy and lacking in focus and conviction. As said above, it is not their fault, the characters are just badly written. But who cares anyway, sometimes even weak films like this are more interesting to see than other seemingly better films when they have what this film has, a great nostalgic pair.
