For starters, notice the titles of Amit’s best-selling books: Fly High, Breathe & Breathe, Possibility. How are the writers of this film any different from the millennial-appropriating, Insta-loving author within the film? Then, notice the running time of Uunchai. It’s 2022, this is a narrative featuring vintage characters who try to evolve, but the film itself is stuck in an era where movies that have no business being 168 minutes long decide to casually be 168 minutes long. Then, the setup. The film’s idea of foreboding is to have the doomed character smile a lot and say “I’m dead serious, yaar” minutes before dying. Then the neglection of smaller details like: Is everyone rich? Amit is wealthy, late friend Bhupen (Danny Denzongpa) was fairly loaded too, Om is middle-class, and Javed is somewhere in between. But money on this super-expensive trip never comes up. In a regular Sooraj Barjatya film, this wouldn’t be an issue – they arrive with a default level of opulence and privilege. But this is a Barjatya film that wants to be more culturally authentic and honest, so why not extend that to its physical identity as well? Then there’s the unnecessarily long road trip with pit stops at Kanpur, Lucknow and Gorakhpur. The mountaineering-movie nut in me came prepared to watch three old-timers find themselves on an arduous climb against all odds – but the mountains, you see, are steeper in their heads. It’s not my fault if it sounds corny.
For a film that bats against antiquity, it still finds the time to yell at young people and women. Not literally yell, but you get the gist: Uunchai in the streets, Baghban in the sheets. For instance, the merry gang – including Javed’s wife (an adorable Neena Gupta) – arrive, unannounced, at Javed’s daughter’s mini-mansion in Kanpur. The plan is to drop off the wife (because there is apparently no place for women on old-boys’ trips either), and move onto Nepal without her knowledge. But the daughter and her dashing husband have their own party plans, which leads to a sad-emoji scene of the parents being asked to book a hotel instead. (I was reminded, not unfondly, of Aa Ab Laut Chalein). Amit does explain to them the next day that it was their fault to drop in without prior warning, and that times have changed. But his reasoning is half-hearted; you can tell that the film is reluctantly pretending to sound balanced about generational conflict. One of the plot points – about a female guest (Sarika) tagging along – involves the men casually going through her suitcase in a hotel as if it’s the most normal thing in the world. It’s like the makers can’t help but reset to (Bollywood) tradition when the going gets tough.