Anirudh gathers his old friends to sit at Raghav’s hospital bedside and tell him stories of their college days. Those days, shown in extended flashbacks, are full of high jinks, not-so-clever pranks (“Chhichhore” is slang for rascals) and life lessons about winning, losing and perseverance. The idea: These stories will help cure Raghav of feeling like a failure.

Tiwari’s last film, “Dangal” (2016), was a hit with critics and audiences alike. (It remains the highest grossing Indian movie of all time.) In “Chhichhore,” he shows a fluid visual style and an engaging if flickering sense of realism that sets up expectations the movie doesn’t fulfill. A big problem is the central character: Anirudh never seems like more than a standard-issue stiff who bobs along looking worried as the script injects yet another scene of the doctor delivering the same bad news: Raghav’s condition is not improving.

The minor characters are also one-dimensional, but that seems to be by design. Each college pal has been assigned one trait and a nickname to go with it: Sexa collects Playboys; Mummy is a mama’s boy; Acid can’t stop cursing. They help bring the college scenes, the movie’s strongest part, to life.

A main lesson of “Chhichhore” is that trying hard is its own reward. One way that Hindi movies have traditionally tried hard is in their maximalism: tears, laughter, more tears, and, of course, singing and dancing. “Chhichhore” goes light on the musical numbers with just a few song montages. Dance — Spanish-inflected for some reason — comes in only at the end over the credits, too late to give the movie the giddy jolt it needs.

Chhichhore

Not rated. In Hindi, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 24 minutes.