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‘Happy New Year’ is fluorescent. No, it doesn’t glow, make no mistake, the reference is only to the blinding colours in the movie. Farah Khan has packed in a bunch of people, and a few handy ‘extras’ just for perks, (where you can play ‘you know who I spotted’) exchanged her sartorial sense with a bad designer from the 70s and made a movie out of it all! And it’s a heist movie!
Five oddballs trying to get hold of a few diamonds while creating the perfect alibi. Sounds familiar? Oh yes, practically all of the heist movies ever made had a script like this, only not so disastrously put together. There’s a drab sob story, revenge, patriotism leaking from all the unfilled gaps and a few forgettable songs (It’s almost fatal that you forget them, however sad for Vishal-Shekhar)
Charlie/Chandramohan Sharma (Shah Rukh), Nandu (Abhishek Bachchan) Tammy (Boman Irani), Jack/Jagmohan (Sonu Sood) and Rohan (Vivaan Shah) make up the pack of wolfs with broken fangs. Charan Grover (a suave Jackie Shroff) is their nemesis. So, Charlie’s back-story where his father, played by Anupam Kher (making an “emotional appearance” according to credits) gets duped and is put in jail (yawn) by villain Jackie Shroff. Charlie has been drawing up an itinerary map of the villain (Blah blah!) and finally comes up with the master plan to rob him/get him arrested. For this, they enroll in a dance competition (long uninteresting story behind that as well).
For a movie directed by choreographer-turned-director Farah Khan, the dances are unimaginative in large portions. Deepika’s famous ‘bar dance’ becomes an eyesore despite the fabulous leggy lass owing to lacklustre choreography. And it’s surprising, since that’s the part where you’d want to see some great action, since it’s a competition. (And what an uninspiring one at that!)
Farah Khan’s love for Hindi movies directly affect the hilarity of the movie, because most of her jokes are references. We’ll need sub-texts and footnotes here. Right from Shah Rukh’s entry with a “bade bade desom mein choti choti baatein”, there are many. After taking close to a minute to zoom out of Shah Rukh’s eight packs, we move on to more references. The ‘Chuk De’ revamped speech, Madhuri Dixit (Tezaab) inspired ‘Mohini’, a rather obnoxious Saroj Khan joke, all aim at being funny, but the overkill of this is a painful reminder of the unoriginal ideas that fill up the screen.
And more on these lines, there are jibes that are racist, sexist and offensive on so many levels, it's hard to keep count. Although, there were instances that Farah Khan could have extended, like the little mime/play gig that she pulled off easily where the team is showing us in advance how they will be executing their plan. Now that’s the quirkiness that was expected (not just for five odd minutes) of this movie, not a vengeance story that hardly made anyone care.
Out of all, Abhishek Bachchan seems to have enjoyed his part, for he seemed to have easily gotten involved with the character he played. Deepika handled it well too, with shocking flexibility! Anurag Kashyap and Vishal Dadlani marginally upped the fun as well.
No one expects a smart slick-flick here, going by the director’s earlier outings. But ‘Happy New Year’ is a collection of nonsense strewn about; slapstick is done to death, laboriously created humour wear a 'laugh at me' tag conspicuously.
Your 2-year-old might let out a chuckle while watching this, but be warned of the political incorrectness that spills over you. Be glad you did not catch this on the actual New Year’s Eve; there’s nothing like a bad movie hangover after being part of a cinematic crime of sorts!
Rating: 2/5
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