Happy Phirr Bhag Jayegi Review - Happily N'Ever After

If my memory serves me right, I remember seeing director Mudassar Aziz and producer Aanand L. Rai, while I was in China earlier this year. Decked in tourist goods (a camera, a hat and a Hawaiian shirt), they were snapping photos and scribbling fermenting thoughts down. Because, it seems like Happy Phirr Bhag Jayegi is not character-driven, nor is it plot driven. What it is is China-driven, which doesn’t even make sense because, architecturally speaking, it’s a haphazard mess that just moves from one place to another in a particularly jarring, urban Shanghai.

Happy (Sonakshi Sinha) is a horticulturist - proven to us only once, because she tells a man, “Men like you are rare - just like the rarest plant in the world.” You can almost hear Mudassar’s keyboard clanking away as he types out a quick Google search on the same. She’s in China for a conference (about bonsais). But, as luck, and Aziz’s circumstantial and fortunate script, would have it, she’s on the same flight as Happy (Diana Penty) and Guddu (a severely disinterested Ali Fazal).

Throw in two goons - one Hindi speaking Chinese man (from whom plenty of jokes are extracted) and one suave English gentleman, fluent in Urdu, Jimmy Shergill and Piyush Mishra (who really seemed to have only done this film for that one drinking scene under the pretext of ‘method acting’) along with one fazed sardar who peppers all his dialogues with paaji, played by a thoroughly underwhelming Jassi Girl) and you get one of today’s most obnoxious films - relying entirely on mere racism, homophobia and blatant xenophobic undertones to get its point (a point that I’ve yet to pick up on?) across.

When Happy Bhag Jayegi’s first instalment released, the biggest complaint was that Penty, as the headstrong Happy, just wasn’t convincing enough. Her wilful character was written for more fiery actresses, like the Kareena Kapoor who played Geet in Jab We Met, the Swara Bhasker who was Sakshi in Veere Di Wedding, or the Deepika Padukone who was Tara from Tamasha. But here, Sinha replaces spunk and fire, with an almost offensive Punjabi accent and some confused and dazed expressions.

It’s all ironic because producer Aanand L. Rai, whose biggest strengths lie in his ability to cultivate modern, urban story in homegrown settings, is out of his element here. In Happy Phirr Bhag Jayegi, which transports the locations to snazzy new areas, you can almost look at Aanand, dazed and confused. There’s no more need to urbanise. Here, in this foreign setting, how do you introduce Desi folks? There’s an answer to that. You introduce Hindi speaking Chinese folks, who look comical as they converse with the legendary Jimmy Shergill.

No doubt, the film has spurts and moments of hilarity - especially in the first half, where Shergill and Mishra rib with each other. It’s truly inspired. Shergill’s underlying sensibilities as an actor highlight that he too is aware of the ridiculousness of the script. That’s why his Bagga, an outlandish Desi don, comes off as the most relatable - and that’s never good, especially in one of Rai’s films - where even the extras should pop off the screen, as good folks you could’ve known.

The triangle that is supposed to fertilise among Gill, Sinha and Shergill is plastic and synthetic in its textures. There’s a ‘gag’ (meaning that it’ll make you gag at how awfully it’s written) involving a bronze medal. Honestly, watching this romance play, you almost expect to be greeted by Nita Ambani, holding the bronze to you as the cumulative audience - applauding you for sitting through this hellish film. It works, but not enough.

And the worst part of Happy Phirr Bhag Jayegi is the overindulgent use of racism, xenophobia, homophobia and transphobia to drive its humour bits home. Even more troubling? The fact that it’s these scenes - whether alluding to cross-dressing as if it’s ‘heinous’, a derogatory scene involving a gay man or the thousands of references to all parts of East Asia being ‘exactly the same - that make the audiences laugh the hardest.

Mudassar, who exercised great control, over the Pakistan-India topic, showing restrain and clarity in his filmmaking, through the tricky Happy Bhag Jayegi, which came at a time of unstable socio-political environment, here ditches that approach. Instead, comments are hurled from one side of the border to the other, an extremely risky choice - especially in the climate we live in today. Despite the irresponsibile filmmaking, Happy Phirr Bhag Jayegi just is not funny. At the end of Happy Bhag Jayegi, the 2016 sleeper hit, you felt as if these characters had finally found their happily ever afters, in their own little isolated joy. But here, it’s anything but that, because after a point, you’re hoping that Sinha will get up and start running again - just so Happy finally stops running. But, hey, knowing Bollywood - part three is on its way.

So, maybe this haphazard girl (who knows, maybe Parineeti Chopra can be Happy #3?) will keep running, but this luck won’t. I’m going with 2 stars.