Saibal Chatterjee
A comedy with the right ideas, Happy Bhag Jayegi isn’t half the film it could have been had writer-director Mudassar Aziz injected a little more vigour and imagination into the screenplay.
It hinges on the cross-border mayhem that peppy Amritsar girl Happy (Diana Penty) unleashes when she, at the behest of her boyfriend Guddu (Ali Fazal), flees her home to avoid being engaged to a petty politician Bagga (Jimmy Sheirgill).
Inadvertently, her run ends in Lahore, in the home of an ex-governor, where the latter’s son Bilal (Abhay Deol) finds himself at his wit’s end over how to pack her off across the border without her illegal presence in Pakistan blowing up into a scandal.
Bilal also has to contend with his no-nonsense fiancee Zoya (Momal Sheikh), a wealthy Lahore businessman’s daughter who he must marry at all cost because his father believes that the union will “change the history of Pakistan”.
The confusion caused by Happy’s arrival is compounded by Bagga and his men who decide to set up a trap for the runaway bride in Lahore.
Amid a great deal of innocuous mirth, a local policeman Usman Afridi (Piyush Mishra) joins forces with Bilal to not only keep Bagga at bay but also to ensure that Happy gets the man she loves.
Happy Bhag Jayegi is a romantic comedy in which everybody appears to get into serious trouble but nobody dies.
In many ways, Happy Bhag Jayegi has an old fashioned feel.
It seeks to derive humour largely from the situations and the dialogues. But while it sticks to that strategy all the way through, it lacks the punch to make its lines count.
The acting is solid all around. Abhay Deol, back in harness after a hiatus, does his very best to prop up the proceedings.
Diana Penty is, however, a bit of a letdown. She is the fulcrum around which the comic romp revolves, but her ‘Punjabi kudi’ act comes off only intermittently.
Pakistani actress Momal Sheikh, playing the only principal character in Happy Bhag Jayegi who does not contribute to the madness unfolding on screen, stands by with suitable sternness, watching the action swirl around her.
Ali Fazal, too, is pretty much in the same boat, but the actor makes the few scenes that he is given to count.
Piyush Mishra is the funniest of the lot: as the bumbling cop, he gets some of the best lines of dialogue and delivers them with just the right blend of bafflement and insouciance.
Since most of the story unfolds in Pakistan, rest assured that there are digs galore at that country but mercifully none of them crosses the line of acceptability.
Happy Bhag Jayegi isn’t an unalloyed laugh riot by any stretch of the imagination. But it isn’t a drag either. It delivers hilarity in small doses and is a passable, mildly funny caper film.
Follow our WhatsApp channel
