Shoojit Sircar’s latest exploration of human beings’ resilience in existing with disease plaguing one’s body, tackled humorously, is rather muted in the humor but no less effective than 2015’s “Piku.” The similarities with “Piku” don’t end there. After all, Sircar dealt there too with an ailing father and the exploration of that father’s relationship with his daughter. Both “Piku” (2015) and “I Want To Talk” (2024) also share a Bachchan family member as one of the central leads. However, “I Want to Talk” is more focused, almost solipsistically so, towards Arjun Sen, played here by Abhishek Bachchan.

Adapting the true story of laryngeal cancer survivor Arjun Sen, who would go on to live far beyond the 100-day expectancy as diagnosed by the doctors, the film by Sircar while adapting a screenplay by Ritsh Shah, is a much more low-key affair. The film’s relationship with the usual Bollywood comic melodrama,...