Because comedy is not easy to pull off, Happy Bhaag Jayegi deserves credit for effort. The times it made me laugh was all for the right reasons – terrific timing by actors and great dialogue by the writers. This happy union usually happened with Jimmy Shergil’s character – a bumbling, bombastic local goon/politician bent on marrying Happy. Along with Piyush Mishra’s Pakistani cop, his is the only other character written as a comic role, and both do a wonderful job in delivering the laughs. Shergill’s comfort with his roguish Amritsari dialect, and Piyush Mishra’s mastery in delivering impeccable Urdu, both are reasons why their performances are enjoyable.
The second half has lengthy sequences where the film goes introspective, delving into Abhay Deol’s (largely unsaid and one-sided) relationships with Happy, and with his childhood sweetheart. While okay on it’s own, it does not fit in as well with the rest of the film. It breaks the mood and the pace that was set so far, and the film struggles to alternate between the serious and the funny. This is a balance that Rajkumar Hirani has successfully mastered, but Happy Bhag Jayegi is not in that genre.
Still, there isn’t anything terribly wrong with the film. That it does not rely on puerile humor or senseless visual gags is one of the good things about the film. That it is not always successful in sustaining the funnies through it’s runtime is the fact that stops it from being a truly memorable one.
Hindi, Comedy, Color