Holidays have become something of a big thing for Bollywood recently. With more and more people getting out during the Holiday season, the typical Bollywood blockbuster releases during the big fesivals. Shah Rukh Khan goes all out during the Diwali season while Salman Khan reserves himself a seat in people’s minds and hearts come Eid. This Diwali, we see the release of Happy New Year. An ensemble cast movie revolving around a heist, two rarities in Bollywood. Here is the complete review of the movie, Happy New Year.
Plot:
Happy New Year is about five people who are brought together by one man, Charlie to avenge a wrong done to his father. Two of the people know about the backstory, while the other three join the gang because they want to make money – a lot of money in a short while.
They plan a heist to steal valuable diamonds from a businessman, (Jackie Shroff) who had framed Charlie’s father, who, unable to bear the humiliation, committed suicide in prison. Now, the businessman is in Dubai, and his hotel is host to the World Dance Competition. Charlie decides to steal the diamonds under the guise of signing up for the dance competition. What happens next forms the rest of the story.
Direction, Screenplay and Plot Review:
The plot is interesting to begin with, but there are so many loopholes and deadends in the entire script and screenplay that the world’s biggest heist turns out to be a convoluted idea that would work only in the dreams of the film maker.
Bollywood movies work by adding the right ingredient at the right time, and though Farah Khan has the ingredients correct (love, drama, patriotism, underdog) she uses them at the wrong time, basically bringing upon an assault to the senses.
The most criminal wastage any filmmaker can make is create interesting characters and then underuse, or not use them at all. The movie makers are definitely guilty of this, if not of bad film making. Quite frankly, the camera just takes a deathstop the moment it veers around Planet Shah Rukh, and that is the biggest strength as well as the worst weakness of the movie. Apart from SRK, the plot gives no breathing space to anyone else.
Most movies do not have a moral – these hep days, morals are termed as ‘underlying storyline’. Unfortunately, Happy New Year has one, and the idea, though contrived, is this:
“We are Indians. Every under country is uncool because it is not Indian, and we are cool, because we said so. “
Basically, there is no reason why the audience would root for the Indian dance team shown the movie when it comes to real life. It is an established fact that they cannot dance, it is blatantly shown that they are hacking the dance results – once with a tablet phone and another time with a laptop.
Racism, of course, goes to a whole new level in this movie. We wonder what Sajid Khan and Farah Khan have against the Brits and the USers, because every movie that they make has something or the other that denigrates them, like the scene where one of the foreign teams are selected, and they push and shove right through the Indian team to reach the stage – surely a more criminal activity that hacking the results of a world renowned dance competition.
The movie makers wants us to forget all the illegal activities of the group just because of something that happened in the past, and because they save a child from an accident. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
When it comes to the direction, though, it is top class. Farah Khan has finetuned the art of telling stories, and with the right script and screenplay, she can still come up trumps at the box office – something that we have seen often times tat the box office.
Performance Reviews:
Shah Rukh, Shah Rukh, Shah Rukh. Apart from SRK, nobody gets breathing space in the movie, and it is a marvel that Boman Irani and Abhishek Bachchcan hold their own. As noted earlier, everyone in the movie has a great character, but it is not evolved, simply because the belle of the Ball is Shah Rukh Khan.
Which brings us to the one positive aspect of the movie, Shah Rukh Khan. Happy New Year is a treat for Shah Rukh Khan. The guy looks better than he ever did, and has a chiseled form that might be temporary, but looks great onscreen. He actually has eight pectoral muscles (that’s the eight-packs).
And in other related news, even Deepika Padukone seems to work out and has developed a four pack of her own. Sonu Sood is in a forgettable role. Abhishek Bachchan’s casting seems to be inspired from Ali in the Dhoom series.
Final Idea:
Happy New Year is an entertainer, and if you can ignore the various plot loopholes, the contrived ideas, and the unrealistic protagonists, it can be a fun viewing. If you are Shah Rukh Khan fan, you should definitely watch Happy New Year.
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