Vijay 69 Review: Too much melodrama dampens film, Anupam Kher’s spirit

Many talented, good-looking men lose their confidence as they grow older, but Anupam Kher is an industry-defining actor who can do whatever he wants, whether it is trekking to Mount Everest with his senior citizen friends in Sooraj Barjatya’s Uunchai or telling the world ‘Kuch bhi ho sakta hai’ (anything is possible) through his stage plays. Kher, now 69, can afford to coast on his charms. Still, you might flinch when you watch him in his Netflix film Vijay 69, no matter how much you are in awe of his craft.
The lively Vijay Mathews (Kher), 69, is motivated to achieve big in life so that his friends will have something substantial to mention in their eulogy of him and be remembered for achieving something substantial. He finds his calling in triathlon – which includes swimming, running and cycling – and works towards becoming the oldest person in India to complete the event.
The plot holds the potential to engage older film buffs—a demographic often overlooked by filmmakers. However, it is replete with flaws in direction, dialogue, editing, and performances. While the first half-an-hour of the film is crisp and gives you a smooth entry into Vijay Mathews’s world, the rest of it slips on the slippery slope of melodrama. And, along with the plot, you slip out of Vijay’s world, making it difficult to keep watching.
Watch the trailer of Vijay 69 here:

Almost every character in every scene seems completely lost, and as a result, the viewer is equally confused. The jarringly improbable plot developments, such as Vijay aiming to be the oldest man to finish a triathlon, only to suddenly be pitted against a boy aiming to be the youngest to complete it, make you wonder if writer-director Akshay Roy took Kher’s popular phrase ‘Kuch bhi ho sakta’ a little too literally. And when the going gets tough, he leans on familiar Bollywood tropes, one of the most prominent being romance, to carry the weight of the film.
The weak plot development makes it tough to evoke sympathy or pain for Vijay, even when he gets teary-eyed during emotional meltdowns—except for one moment when the film makes you realise how challenging it is to be old and be constantly told by any Tom, Dick, or Harry to live life in a certain way simply because of your age.
When the time comes for Kher to prove that age is just a number, he does so—but not convincingly. He was far more convincing as an ageing man in his 60s in Saaransh (1984), even though he was only 28 at the time.

Anupam Kher and Chunky Panday in a still from Vijay 69.

And when you look at Chunky Panday, Kher’s Parsi best friend in the film, you can’t help but wonder: when will Hindi cinema stop believing that to portray people from different cultures, one needs a specific body language and dialect?
In pursuit of the noble message that ‘age is just a number’ when it comes to living life on your own terms and fulfilling your dreams, Akshay Roy fails to realise that telling the story of this oft-neglected section of society requires a fresh approach. A scene with the elderly man reaching the finish line, arms and legs flailing, is not enough to show his struggles—we’ve seen this A LOT.
Instead, he sticks to a populist, sitcom-style setup that ultimately undermines the potential of the narrative.