On a lazy Sunday afternoon, when you have nothing else to do and turn on a ‘slice of life’ webseries, snooze through parts of an episode, land up on a different story line, catch a wink again, find that the story has moved on to some other character, you watch some, go back to sleep, keep repeating that for 90 minutes.
That’s essentially the experience of sitting through Hope Aur Hum but without the catnap in between.
Sudip Bandyopadhyay’s film follows the Srivastava family of three generations, where each character is in pursuit of something. Although the desires are simple, they are assumed to be existential metaphors. The grandfather, Nagesh (Naseeruddin Shah) is holding on to his German-made xerox machine which was once the attraction of the gully he lived in all his life.
- Director: Sudip Bandyopadhyay
- Cast: Naseeruddin Shah, Sonali Kulkarni, Naveen Kasturia, Aamir Bashir, Sajid Kabir
- Story line: A three-generation family deals with various circumstances over a summer
Today, he placates customers standing outside his shop, complaining loudly about its lousy quality. “It’s not a machine, it’s an artist,” he insists. This story track is expected to comment on the transience of objects and loneliness of old age; a subject you think the film will explore throughout.
But Hope Aur Hum suddenly shifts gear to destiny, where everything that happens to the characters is supposed to be fate. On paper, this may have potential to be engaging but the instances the filmmaker picks to explore these philosophical subjects with are mundane and saccharine.
For instance, the younger son of Nagesh, Nitin (Naveen Kasturia), loses his phone, which ends up with a girl, who he thinks could be a potential date.
Like an American sitcom, the film tries to go back and forth between characters, but it is executed so haphazardly that it’s difficult to care for any of them. The actors put up an earnest foot forward, but Shah and Sonali Kulkarni (as his daughter-in-law) are wasted in a film with weak and cliched characterisation.
Hope Aur Hum doesn’t even manage to get its setting right. The family lives in Mumbai’s Gorai neighbourhood, primarily an East Indian locality, but not a sentence is uttered in Marathi. The characters are so occupied with their obsessions that there’s a glaring dissociation with their setting, which could otherwise render a chucklesome “Mumbai film”. In entirety, there are a handful of humourous moments but none that are memorable. This film is best watched when you have the option to either fast forward or hit the snooze button.
