Release date:
|
August 19, 2016
|
Director:
|
Mudassar Aziz
|
Cast:
Language:
|
Diana Penty,
Abhay Deol, Momal Sheikh, Jimmy Sheirgill, Ali Fazal, Piyush Mishra
Hindi
|
Urdu is like French
and Bengali – the sort of language in which a person might spew abuse yet sound
like they are telling you they love you. This lyrical tongue with all its
eccentricities and beauty is one of the pegs on which hangs the week’s big
Bollywood release Happy Bhag Jayegi.
The other peg is a Punjabi woman called Happy.
Written and directed by Mudassar
Aziz, Happy
Bhag Jayegi is the story of Amritsari
bride Happy (Diana Penty) who runs away on the day of her marriage ceremony.
Even as the groom is readying himself for their mandap, Happy boards the wrong escape vehicle and ends up in
Pakistan. While her husband-in-waiting Daman Singh Bagga (Jimmy Sheirgill) and
her boyfriend Guddu (Ali Fazal) desperately search for her, she creates havoc
in the lives of a budding politician in Lahore, Bilal Ahmed (Abhay Deol), and
his fiancé Zoya played by the Pakistani actress Momal Sheikh making her
Bollywood debut here.
Most of this you
might already have gathered from the trailer. What the trailer does not reveal
is that the film’s best moments have been packed into it, and there is nothing
much else it has to say. Happy Bhag
Jayegi is hilarious at a superficial level and Penty is brimming with
potential – as she was in her first film Cocktail
in 2012 – but her Happy, despite being the titular protagonist, is the most
under-written character in the entire story. So ultimately what we are left
with is a film filled with laughter up to a point but completely lacking
depth.
Co-produced by
Aanand L. Rai, the supremely successful director of Tanu Weds Manu and Tanu Weds Manu Returns, Happy Bhag Jayegi starts
off very well. A runaway bride landing up in the home of a prominent politician
in Lahore without her passport or visa is a situation teeming with
possibilities. The first half moves at an accelerated pace, the humour is
unrelenting and every single member of the cast is rock solid. Deol, in
particular, gets a role worth his charisma after a long time and Piyush Mishra
playing his ally, the hapless senior policeman ASP Usman Afridi, nudges the
funny bone each time he walks on to the screen. Besides, how can you not giggle
over a film featuring a grown Punjabi man called Winkle?
And then something
goes wrong. What happened in the pre-interval portion is repeated post
interval, and it gradually becomes evident that Mudassar Aziz – who earlier made
the disastrous Dulha Mil Gaya (2010)
with Sushmita Sen – does not know how to take his concept forward. The film’s
limited writing is its failing.
Worst of all is the treatment of
Happy. She seems like an interesting creature, a free spirit who will not be
constrained by a despotic father, a violence-prone fiancé or misadventures in
enemy territory. Yet beyond that one-line description, the film fails to
acquaint us with this woman. She remains nothing more than the introductory
note about her that was probably sent to the producer at the start of this
project. Guddu tells Bilal that it is impossible not to love Happy once you get
to know her, but we never get to know her so we do not find that out for
ourselves.
Imagine having your name in the
name of the film, and yet being given only one calm conversation with another
character throughout that film’s 126 minutes. Happy is constantly described
with admiration and gazed at with adoring eyes by the two young men in her
life, but we do not have a chance to fall in love with her ourselves because
she remains such a distant figure. She is forever running in Happy Bhag Jayegi, but after a while the
running too remains a gimmick that worked well in the promotional teaser but
means little in a full-length story.
Oddly enough, Bilal’s character
is far better explored in the screenplay. In fact, at some point this becomes
more a film about Bilal and Zoya than about Happy and Guddu. Perhaps a more
appropriate title could have been Kya
Bilal Happy Ke Saath Bhag Jayega? However, Aziz’s inadequacies show up here
too. He is clearly keen to surprise us with Bilal’s actions and decisions
towards the end of the second half, but since the man’s motivations are poorly
fleshed out, they remain completely unconvincing.
Bagga, on the other hand, is
described as a vicious fellow by Happy. You can see that he ain’t no saint by
the behaviour of the goons who form his coterie. However, his character never
rises above Jimmy Sheirgill’s naturally likeable personality.
For the record, though most of
the story is set in Pakistan, the film is shot entirely in India – in Amritsar,
Chandigarh and Mumbai. Aziz throws in some crowd-pleasing lines about Pakistan,
but they are inoffensive and balanced out by the bond that forms between the
four youngsters at the centre of the story.
These are among the few moments
of maturity in the screenplay. The others come in the atypical portrayal of the
film’s Punjabis (they do not call out “Balle
Balle” or dance the Bhangra at the drop of a hat) and in the writing of
Zoya. She could have easily been pigeonholed as the evil doosri aurat (other woman) in the hero’s life, but somewhere along
the way, a spot of nuance enters the picture and she becomes more than that
lazy stereotype. One of the film’s nicest scenes is the one in which she urges Bilal
to make his own life decisions rather than bowing to his father’s wishes at all
times.
Happy Bhag Jayegi
includes the song Ashiq tera with the
following lyrics (music – Sohail Sen, words – Aziz himself): “Dil ke aage yeh aafat badi hai / Khwahishein phir bhi zidd pe adi hain / Humse maayus hoga zamana / Par zamane ki kisko padi hai.” Roughly
translated, that means: “There is a huge hurdle standing in the way of my
desires / but I am determined to follow my heart / The world may be
disappointed in me / But who cares about this world?” THIS is what the film
should have been and could have been about. Happy
Bhag Jayegi could have been about finding happiness in pursuing your
dreams. You can see that that is what it wants to be, but does not know how to
be.
Aziz obviously has a flair for
comedy but he needs to work on it. What he desperately needed here was either
more time and thought, or a co-writer to help him build on the starting blocks
he set up. Happy
Bhag Jayegi is fun and funny in large
parts, but the second half is also bogged down by how insubstantial and
consequently forgettable it is.
Rating
(out of five): **
CBFC Rating (India):
|
U
|
Running time:
|
126 minutes
|
This
review has also been published on Firstpost:
Poster
courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/erosnow/
Film
still courtesy:
Raindrop
Media
No comments:
Post a Comment