There was a neat symmetry in Madhumita’s Tamil film K.D. (2019), about the bond between an 80-year-old man and an eight-year-old boy. For her Hindi adaptation Kaalidhar Laapata, Madhumita shrinks the generation gap while retaining the themes of rejection, abandonment and second chances.

The ZEE5 release is led by 49-year-old Abhishek Bachchan as 40-year-old Kaalidhar, who appears to have early onset dementia. Tired of caring for Kaalidhar, his greedy brothers Manohar (Vishwanath Chatterjee) and Sundar (Priyank Tiwari) and Manohar’s wife Neetu (Madhulika Jatoliya) dump him at the Kumbh Mela.

Only Kaalidhar’s sister Gudiya (Priya Yadav) mourns the disappearance of a man who has sacrificed his life and his love Meera (Nimrat Kaur) for his family. All seems lost for Kaalidhar until he runs into the precocious orphan Ballu (Daivik Baghela).

Ballu adopts the disoriented Kaalidhar and encourages him to have the experiences he has denied himself. Meanwhile, government official Subodh (Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub) sets out to find Kaalidhar, his motives as murky as Kaalidhar’s kin.

By directing the Hindi version and co-writing the screenplay with Amitosh Nagpal, Madhumita stays in charge of the film’s emotional beats. The core relationship between two cast-aside souls who find that they have a lot in common was the chief draw of the original film and is the...

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