Kaalidhar Laapata Movie Review: A Familiar Sweetness

Kaalidhar Laapata Cast/Actors: Abhishek Bachchan, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, Daivik Bhagela, Nimrat Kaur & Others

Kaalidhar Laapata Director: Madhumita

Kaalidhar Laapata Production House: Zee Studios and Emmay Entertainment.

Kaalidhar Laapata Release Date: Streaming from 4 July 2025

Kaalidhar Laapata Available On: ZEE5 (OTT Platform)

Kaalidhar Laapata Released/Available In Languages: Hindi

Kaalidhar Laapata Movie Runtime: 1h 49m

Kaalidhar Laapata Critic Review:

A shawl. A beard. And traffic-stopping dementia. Perhaps the onset of early dementia.

Whatever it is, Kaalidhar (Abhishek Bachchan) is less verbose and a lot more endearing than Nana Patekar was as Deepak Tyagi in Vanvaas last year.

The comparison is kosher because the premise is similar. Greedy family members yearning to get their hands on the elderly patient’s property; deserting him in a far-off crowded place where he will neither be recognised nor know how to head home. Tyagi’s children took him to Banaras where an orphan turned conman lavished more care on him than his own family.

Traffic-stopping Kaalidhar’s brothers, along with a nasty, foul-mouthed sister-in-law, leave him penniless at the Kumbh Mela. There’s a scene where the sis-in-law even argues that ‘Bhaiya’ has brought home the disease of the rich, “amiron ki bimari”, which they can ill afford.

Kumbh Mela is the religious setting that Hindi cinema has often used for lost-and-found stories but this time the brothers would like Kaalidhar to get lost and never return.

They have already got his thumb impression fraudulently on the property papers.

Following the template of Baghban (2003) and Vanvaas, writer-director Madhumita Sundararaman brings an orphan into the distressed senior’s life. She did it in the 2019 Tamil version KD (Karuppu Durai) and continues to elaborate on the orphan-elder equation in the Hindi remake too, a friendship that’s used and reused to drive home the point that sometimes strangers are more compassionate than blood relatives.

Using closeups of saints at the Kumbh Mela, the sound of conch shells and slogans of Har Har Mahadev like frightening tropes in a horror movie, Madhumita disorients Kaalidhar.

But he knows with clarity what his family has been up to. Siblings that he brought up at the cost of himself remaining an angootha chhaap.

Dementia is an unpredictable beast. It appears and disappears at whim. And so it is with Madhumita’s Kaalidhar which takes off with the disease but is forgotten most of the way.

Fate intervenes in Kaalidhar’s case as a fire destroys the property papers back home, his brothers now desperate to find him for his signature.

The tiresome part is that the premise of the callous family and the good-hearted orphan have been recycled for ages. Rajesh Khanna’s Avtaar (1983) told the same story more than 40 years ago.

The sparkle therefore comes not from the basic plot but from a cheeky-warm friendship that grows between orphan Ballu (a delightful Daivik Baghela) and Kaalidhar, soon christened KD by his new buddy.

Abhishek Bachchan too is in his element when he partners a kid, his eyes conveying sadness better than any trite dialogue.

There is a charming connection with biryani that adds a dash of spice, a romance left unfulfilled that brings Meera (Nimrat Kaur) into the frame and a moment when KD must let Ballu move out of his life for the little boy’s own good.

Somewhere in these episodic little adventures, Subodh (Mohammed Zeeshan) is hired to find Kaalidhar though there’s little contribution from that track.

Ultimately, evil gets its comeuppance while KD rides into the yonder, happier and lighter. Somewhere along the way, it’s forgotten that he had dementia. It rarely shows up after the initial focus on it, making you wonder if the writers (Madhumita+Amitosh Nagpal) also had a spot of memory loss about it.

Kaalidhar Laapata – Watch it or not: Since it’s on OTT, it makes a sweet watch-from-home film even if the premise has been coming up in a new avatar every few years.

Kaalidhar Laapata Rating: 2.5 out of 5 (i.e. 2.5/5)

Kaalidhar Laapata Official Trailer: