REVIEW 628: HAPPY PHIRR BHAG JAYEGI

Release date:	August 24, 2018
Director:	Mudassar Aziz
Cast: Language:	Sonakshi Sinha, Jassie Gill, Jimmy Sheirgill, Piyush Mishra, Aparshakti Khurana, Jason Tham, Cameos: Diana Penty and Ali Fazal Punjabi, Hindi, Urdu and a spot of Mandarin

Happy Bhag Jayegi was the sleeper hit of 2016, a comedy revolving around an Amritsari bride who runs away from her wedding to marry the man she loves, but lands up in the home of a stranger – a Pakistani politician – by mistake. Diana Penty was luminous as the eponymous leading lady of that film, which, despite its insubstantial plot and flagging second half, managed to be funny all the same. She reprises her role in a cameo in Happy Phirr Bhag Jayegi even as it diverts its gaze to another Punjabi girl called Harpreet a.k.a. Happy, this one played by Sonakshi Sinha.

Writer-director Mudassar Aziz appears to have taken the feedback on his previous venture to heart. Happy Part 2 not only remains largely amusing if you can excuse a few waning patches here and there, the writing of its characters and the plot also have more substance than Part 1. Of course it is a parade of non-stop nonsense, but how does it hurt to get a fit of the giggles in a film that yet does not insult your intelligence and heads off in directions that Bollywood rarely bothers with, especially in comedy?

For a start, it is nice to once again meet a heroine not helplessly hanging around waiting for a man, any man, to bachao (save) her when she is trapped in trying circumstances. This Happy is a combustible woman and like that Happy takes matters into her own hands when the going gets tough.

There’s more where she came from. How often do we get to see a Hindi film featuring a turbanned Sikh as a major character without the screenplay being packed with Bhangra and cries of “balle balle”, without the guy in question being loud and boisterous, and sans sermons about Sikh valour or traditions of service to others? Representation should not be about pedestalising minority communities, but about acknowledging their existence in big and small ways without feeling compelled to create a shindig around an individual’s religious or ethnic identity.

So yeah, we have Khushwant Singh Gill (played by the very likeable Jassie Gill) who is recruited to Happy’s team in a foreign country, without so much as a balle balle or a lecture about Sikhism. Then there is the Lahori cop Usman Afridi (Piyush Mishra) and the Amritsari thug-politician Daman Singh Bagga (Jimmy Sheirgill), carryovers from Happy Bhag Jayegi, still sparring over Urdu and Pakistan in a still engaging and still inoffensive fashion. Yeah, a Pakistani character who is not belittled or demonised in this era of crude, in-your-face nationalism that India is passing through and Bollywood is pandering to. Imagine that.

The trickiest part of Happy Phirr Bhag Jayegi is that it is set in China, which would have been an excuse to make lazy racist jokes in most Bollywood films, but not here. Aziz walks a fine line – a clever line – by allowing his characters to be racist as they would be in real life, while using their prejudice to throw a spotlight on the “all Chinese look alike” attitude of the average insular Indian who resorts to the dismissive umbrella labels “Cheeni” and “chinky” for people of the entire geographical region extending from our own north-eastern states all the way to Japan. Happy Phirr Bhag Jayegi’s humour incorporates consequences that the primary characters suffer for their insularity and ignorance. This is done mainly through the medium of the gangster Chang played by Jason Tham.

None of this is spelt out in black and white, nor is the normalisation of a gay romance in a brief passage that eschews Dostana-style jokes completely. In a film where you least expect it, we are thus reminded without anyone overtly saying so, that homosexuals, cross dressers, Pakistanis, the Chinese, Punjabis and women – groups that are usually stereotyped in Hindi cinema – are all just regular people.

Happy Phirr Bhag Jayegi could still have done with more work on its writing and direction – the songs (barring the remix of the appropriately chosen classic, Mera naam Chin Chin Chu) are ordinary and feel superfluous, there are places in the narrative where the energy dips (which is inexcusable in a comedy), the manner in which a fellow called Fa in Shanghai is introduced seems to suggest that he will be a significant player among Happy’s allies but then he inexplicably disappears for most of the film, and the sidelining of Diana Penty’s Happy feels like such an opportunity lost considering the spark this underrated, under-utilised actor showed in the first Happy.

Truth be told, I was really looking forward to more scenes with Sinha and Penty together, because though Sinha is the bigger star, Penty has the charisma to match. Where she does get screen space in Happy Phirr Bhag Jayegi, Penty gives us evidence of her innate verve, which adds to the disappointment on this front.

Sinha’s filmography so far has been dominated by crass big-banner ventures often trivialising sexual harassment and starring major male stars, in which she played the hero’s lover who could have been played by any other marginal female star. She has underlined her ability to be more than just a vapid sidelight and in fact to carry a story on her shoulders in films such as Lootera, Noor and Ittefaq. Happy Phirr Bhag Jayegi gives her the chance to tap her comic timing and she does so with gusto, leading the charge in an ensemble cast of gifted actors. Piyush Mishra is as hilarious as he was last time. Sheirgill gets more opportunities here to mine his flair for comedy and is good too. And Gill is, without question, hero material.

Happy Phirr Bhag Jayegi is not without flaws, but they are overshadowed by the absence of references to farts, poop and animal backsides, homophobia, misogyny and other ugly biases that have repeatedly reared their heads in the kind of comedies Sinha herself has been a part of over the years. Pleasant and engaging is an option in this genre – thank you, Mr Aziz, for knowing that.

Note: This is not a Hindi film. The dialogues are a mix of Punjabi, Hindi, Urdu and a spot of Mandarin (I think), with Punjabi dominating the conversations but not so much that a non-Hindi speaker would be lost.

Rating (out of five stars): **1/4

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	137 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/bollywood/happy-phirr-bhag-jayegi-movie-review-sonakshi-sinha-leads-charge-with-gusto-in-a-pleasantly-silly-comedy-5034911.html

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Phirr_Bhag_Jayegi

REVIEW 300: THE SHAUKEENS

Release date:	November 7, 2014
Director:	Abhishek Sharma
Cast: Language:	Anupam Kher, Annu Kapoor, Piyush Mishra, Lisa Haydon, Akshay Kumar, Cyrus Broacha Hindi

The kindest thing to be said about The Shaukeens is that it isn’t icky, as the theme might suggest. I say this despite the fact that the camera zooms in on an overweight Piyush Mishra’s crotch and bum in undies in one scene. Having survived that image, I’m here to tell you about this tale of three horny old men who travel abroad to get some action between the sheets.

The film is a remake of Basu Chatterjee’s 1982 comedy Shaukeen starring Ashok Kumar, A.K. Hangal and Utpal Dutt as the elderly trio. Playing their parts in 2014 are Anupam Kher, Annu Kapoor and Piyush Mishra, with Akshay Kumar and Lisa Haydon stepping into the roles – not carbon copies – originally played by Mithun Chakraborty and Rati Agnihotri. Over three decades later, Rati is back in the remake, this time in a tiny role as the wife of one of the old guys.

Laali (Kher), KD (Kapoor) and Pinky (Mishra) are friends in Delhi. Laali is married, KD is a bachelor and Pinky is widowed. The three spend their days fantasising about young women. They meet the sexy Ahana Bhasin (Haydon) and movie star Akshay Kumar (meaning, Akshay playing himself) when they travel to Mauritius on a quest for female flesh. 

Considering the quantum of acting talent at his disposal, it’s disappointing that director Abhishek Sharma (Tere Bin Laden) delivers uniformly flaccid scenes with the old guys. The Shaukeens picks up only when Akki and Ahana are in the picture either together or separately. Two things about the male superstar are revealed here. First, that he knows how to poke fun at himself. Second, that Akshay is a first-rate comic who wastes himself in fourth-rate comedies like Entertainment and Khiladi 786. The film’s mockery of his career so far and his desperate effort to impress an oily-haired National Award-winning Bengali director are laugh-out-loud hilarious.

What is also revealed is that Haydon’s turn as a feisty woman-about-town in Vikas Bahl’s Queen earlier this year was no flash in the pan. In The Shaukeens, she is just as good playing a ditsy Facebook-obsessed designer whose idea of creativity is to fashion a pendant from a dead frog’s eyes and make other equally horrendous accessories and clothes from bizarre raw material.

The Shaukeens’ screenplay is by Tigmanshu Dhulia, director of Paan Singh Tomar, the Saheb Biwi aur Gangster films and 2003’s utterly beautiful though unheralded Haasil. Dhulia appears conscious not to be overtly offensive towards women – after all, lustful old men do exist in the real world and the ones in this story are punished by the script every time they misbehave. However, he seems not to realise that it’s possible to be funny with this theme even while avoiding misogyny. Forget the original Shaukeen. Think instead of the old American serial Golden Girls and especially that one particular episode in which one of the elderly protagonists is asked out by an attractive young man; she thinks he is romantically interested in her, only to discover that in fact he’s missing home and seeking her company in this new town because she reminds him of his mother. Ouch! Right? Yet the episode was comical and poignant rolled in one. It took the theme of ageing and loneliness, infused it with humour, and tickled us without being either sexist or ageist. How could Dhulia, one of Bollywood’s best, fail to strike that delicate balance? The Shaukeens’ treatment of its senior citizens’ lives is plain dull.

It’s another matter that Bollywood considers male infidelity a source of humour (think No Entry and numerous other films on the subject) but you’d be hard pressed to find a comedy on female infidelity. Oh no no, a Hindi film on a wife straying into another man’s arms would perforce be a ‘thinking’ film! As for an old woman committing adultery, such a film would most likely lead to nationwide protests, for how on earth can we accept that a woman in her twilight years might want companionship, or worse, might actually enjoy – blasphemy of blasphemies!!! – sex?

The girls in Golden Girls were all either divorced or widowed. Obviously, if one of them was married, then her romantic adventures would have required a different sort of deft handling. Here in The Shaukeens, the fact that Laali’s wife has gone all religious on him is clearly meant to be a justification for his cheating ways. Imagine a gender reversal being treated so lightly by Bollywood! Laali shows no remorse, and we are supposed to unquestioningly accept him and his lecherous pals as good guys. Because boys will be boys? Or as Mulayam Singh Yadav said in a graver context that reveals the same mentality, “Ladke hai, galti ho jaati hai”?

So yes, Bollywood bares its gender prejudice not just through the films it makes but also the ones it chooses not to make. That being said, it’s only fair to point out that the interactions of the three old men with Ahana never cross a certain line, and are not repulsive in the way one could expect them to be if this film had been directed and written by the guys who made Grand Masti. 

Sadly, that’s not enough. The Shaukeens lacks depth, energy or pizzazz. The scenes with Akshay and Ahana – especially the ones with Akshay – are stomach-achingly riotous and yet thoughtful, but she enters the picture rather late, he appears even later at interval time and is in the film only in an extended cameo anyway. That he had limited days on this project is evident from a scene in which he severely mispronounces Ahana’s surname but seems not to have had time for a retake.

Still, The Shaukeens’ strength remains the sub-plot involving Akshay, his search for professional fulfillment, his greedy manager (Cyrus Broacha), his unimaginative director (Manoj Joshi) and an exploitative assistant director. That segment takes so many candid swipes at Bollywood that it deserved a full-fledged film of its own. Likewise, The Shaukeens is surprisingly insightful in its characterisation of Ahana and her generation’s need for constant affirmation from the social media. Wish as much thought had gone into the writing of the three oldies.

Rating (out of five stars): **

CBFC Rating (India):	U/A
Running time:	125 minutes

Photograph courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/HappyNewYear