Vijay 69: Anupam Kher’s Triathlon Film Falls Before It Can Run

<em>Vijay 69</em> is so keen to convey its central hackneyed message that even the grass in the frame is obliged to perform.

Ishita+Sengupta

Nov 08, 2024

Promo poster for Vijay 69.

AKSHAY ROY'S Vijay 69 makes the aching Meri Pyaari Bindu (2017) look like a fluke. The filmmaker’s recent outing is everything his debut was not. If the Ayushmann Khurrana and Parineeti Chopra-starrer unfolded with the tangible logic of the heart then the Anupam Kher-led film is as generic as a pea. If Roy had started out with the promise of using the personal as the centrepiece of the plot then his sophomore work upends it, unravelling in ways that would put even commercials of heart medicines, featuring old people taking a brisk walk till they fall on their backs, to shame. Vijay 69 is so keen to convey its central hackneyed message that even the grass in the frame is obliged to perform.

Given the title, the rest of the story is not difficult to assume. Vijay Mathews (Kher) is a 69-year-old man who wants to run a triathlon, a contest comprising swimming, running and cycling, as a last-ditch effort to do something memorable with his life. It is a tall task and one would believe that something earth-shattering must have brought about this epiphany. But that is not the case.

Written by Roy (Abbas Tyrewala is credited with the dialogues), Vijay 69 is so taken by the tenacity of its setting that it does very little to sufficiently prop it up. One night of miscommunication led Mathews to take up this challenge and become the oldest person to do so. He went missing and his friend thought he killed himself (they vaguely saw someone jump into the water and thought it was him). Midway through the service, he arrives and then looking at the empty coffin and a badly written paean from his best friend decides to do something with his life. If my friends declared me dead on assumption and wrote a bad eulogy, I would perhaps stop talking to them without deciding to kill myself. But here we are.

The little effort with which the film cuts the noise to drive straight to the point hurts more given how much of a slog the rest of it is. The beats are so predictable that it puts the rising sun to shame. Vijay, a foul-mouthed sexagenarian, is a swimming coach. Decades ago, he was a rising star and won local championships. His ambition was interrupted by his wife’s terminal illness and her death rendered him a lonely man. Now staring at his own death in the face (the sight of the empty coffin) he decides to resume his passion. But when have things been so easy?

This is how things go. Vijay takes one step and the film throws him another hurdle, he overcomes that and out comes another. Initially, the triathlon committee refuses to allow him to participate, miraculously they do then something happens to derail him. When he braves that, an evil journalist hired by a competitor’s father levels fake charges against him. Vijay 69 goes out on a limb to make the connection as we see the said journalist taking money from the said man out in the open. If the film was a person, its IQ would be that of a soft toy for it completely side-steps that a 69-year-old man in wanting to live his life again has obstacles already built in the premise. Adding anything more would be an embellishment.

Things get more literal from here. If the main contention of the outing is that dreams have no age (they really should), it is literalised by the presence of Aditya Jaiswal (Mihir Ahuja), an 18-year-old man and the youngest to compete in the triathlon. His father is supposed to be the bad guy but given how unlikeable Vijay is, I wouldn’t blame him for being scheming. But they are not the only characters written as adjectives walking as people. Everyone in the film exists for either of the two reasons — either to remind Vijay how old he is or to help him fight his age. Of course, Vijay’s daughter falls in the former category and Vijay 69 does everything to dress her perfectly valid concerns as ungrateful lectures.

The tone is consistently heightened but Roy takes things up even a notch higher in the training montages. Vijay doesn’t just fall, he crumbles and falls. He is never in pain, he is breathlessly in pain. Kher amps up as well, matching the film's melodrama with an exaggerated turn that is partly reminiscent of Amitabh Bachchan’s Bhashkor Banerjee in Piku and wholly unbecoming of his merit. He is always acting even when lying unconscious on the hospital bed. There is also Chunky Pandey as his best friend who hams up with accents and wigs and belongs to the many comedy shows on television.

To say that Vijay 69 is a fall from grace for Roy would be to put things mildly. It showcases the filmmaker's lack of confidence and his willingness to pull all the stops to be more palatable and mainstream. As a result, his distinct voice is no more and what exists is a hyperbolic story where all characters are caricatures and every bump is a hindrance. The only message that comes through with conviction is this: it is never a good time to be young or old.

Vijay 69 is currently streaming on Netflix.