Umar Review

Three old men, two of whom are uncared for by their sons while the third is deserted by Fate, are an inseparable and cute threesome to start with, but Umar, Karan Razdan's paen to the age-old theme of Age before Duty, has you following the plot interestedly till the interval. But immediately after the interval, the director inexplicably veers off to a casually commercial and extremely over-the-top and illogical treatment which has you cringing with acute discomfort. In places, he seems to believe his audience is devoid of not just taste but even commonsense.

The film actually begins pretty well and its focus on the plight of senior citizens ill treated by their sons and Fate in the autumn of their lives gets your attention. The three are Iqbal (Kader Khan), Chandrakant (Prem Chopra) and Rajpal (Satish Kaushik). While Kader Khan has lost his family, Prem Chopra and Satish Kaushik are living with their sons and daughter in London. The two had not only raised their children by dint of sheer hard work and sacrifice, but also managed to send them to London for higher studies. And now, they are here, together in London, ruing the complete lack of respect and affection from their children, and clinging together for moral and emotional support. As they plod through the vicissitudes of Life and the abuse and ill treatment by their children, the plight of the three old men does evoke sympathy and righteous anger in you, and you're even willing to overlook the fact that all the characters are completely unidimensional ie either black or white -- the story does move you.

Even as the three men crave a respectful acceptance, they meet a pleasant young man Shashank (Jimmy Shergill) who's the model of respect and concern for elders, and whose mother has instilled every single virtue that the old men have yearned for in their own children. In fact, Shashank and the old men are drawn so close to one another that when Shashank has to meet the rich parents of the pretty young student he loves (Shehnaz Treasurywalla), he asks all three which of them would be willing to go as his father to meet Shehnaz's father (played by Shakti Kapoor). All three happen to be busy, but then, even as Shashank is sitting alone with the girl's family, one by one, all three turn up as his father! The hilarious situation drives home the closeness the three old men feel for Shashank. However, things aren't hunky dory for Shahshank the son of a rich businessman and MP in London (played by Dalip Tahil) is also in love with Shehnaz, and soon after a fight sequence in which he thrashes the goon and his sidekicks, Shashank is framed for the murder of a rich socialite who is actually Dalip Tahil's former keep, and things get murky.

The three old men inadvertently help Shashank escape from the clutches of the London Police, and hide him in Rajpal's house. But the greedy children of the old men inform the cops about Shashank, who leaves. Only, the three old men go with him!

From here, suddenly, the film gets into a completely illogical treatment of a criminal angle, with the old men and Shashank and Shehnaz actually dancing and singing after having given the London cops the slip! Old man Chandrakant discovers he packs a superpowerful punch and goes about flailing baddies and sending them flying over fences. And even though the London cops know what the fugitives look like, they casually walk around London streets and Shashank also ends up searching the house/club where his ex boss was allegedly murdered by him. Are London cops so dumb? The criminal angle could have perhaps been woven in for commercial reasons, but is should have been much shorter and far more logical.

Some of the sequences in which the director depicts the gross humiliation of the old men are just that: gross. Chandrakant's son, depicted as the ultimately evil son, actually is trigge