A Bunch of Thoughts on "Happy New Year"

1) This film is long. SO long. There's a moment, right before Farah Khan's name shows up in the opening credits, when Shah Rukh Khan's voiceover informs us that "Lambi kahaani hai" ("It's a long story.") An hour in, the movie was barely done introducing its principal cast, and I realized that SRK's line might, in fact, have been a threat. 

The problem is, they easily could have trimmed about a third of the film without losing out on anything substantive. The protagonist, Charlie, is planning a heist to avenge his father. It's not a super-unusual or particularly interesting heist (it's got the usual lasers and passwords and vaults), except for the fact that he and his ragtag team have to participate in a dance competition in order to pull it off. But the audience has Charlie's plan explained to it at (excruciating) length again and again and again. Also, Farah Khan stages some fun gags and comic moments, but too many others just don't land. Nandu (Abhishek Bachchan) vomits at will, Jags (Sonu Sood) goes into rages when he thinks people are insulting his mother, Boman Irani's character gets stress fits. None of this is particularly funny, and all of it happens too often and for too long.

2) You know what they could have spent more of the film's exhausting run time on? Deepika Padukone. She may not be the great dancer she's playing (she is stunning but stiff in Lovely, winningly fluid in Manwa Laage and the final dance number), but she has a delightful facility with the tonal shifts that often characterize masala movies. She can go from broad comedy to heartfelt, outsized emotion with no sign of strain. In Bollywood comedies, female actors rarely get to be funny, but Padukone steals every scene she's in. She's become the sort of actor-star that has you rooting for her no matter how under-written her part is. I missed her when she wasn't on screen. I wanted more of her.

3) I didn't want more of SRK's Charlie. however. One reason I enjoyed the much-maligned Jab Tak Hai Jaan so much is that Khan got to be charming in that easy, humorous, movie-star way that he possesses but hasn't shown us too often in recent years. I wish that's the sort of easy, unclenched attitude he'd gone for here, because that's the only way this sort of larger-than-life, filmi badass character works. (Watch Hrithik's sexy turn in Dhoom 2 and then Aamir's constipated one in Dhoom 3, and you'll know what I mean.)

My favorite SRK moments in this one were in the Satakli song where he got to be happy and smiley and just hang with the rest of the gang. SRK can play Big Man in Charge well, but only when the character is inherently the kind of guy you do want in charge (Kabir Khan in Chak De!), not just someone who gets to be the boss-dude because he's played by a superstar.  

Charlie is such a douche, though. He ropes in people who have nothing to do with his vendetta into his plan, knowing full well that if something goes wrong, they could go to jail as well. (We learn soon enough that his master plan, the one that has his gang constantly falling at his feet for, is flawed.) He constantly puts down Nandu and Mohini because the former is from a less privileged background and thus not classy enough, and the latter is a "bar-dancer" and therefore pretty much a sex worker. (Nothing wrong with being a sex worker. Unless, of course, you're chilling with Charlie. Because he'll be mean to you about it. Ugh.) Charlie also gets his nemesis's son thrown into jail even though that dude did nothing wrong. (I mean, his hair was . . . not good, but that is not a punishable offense.)

4) I have to, as always, give SRK credit for being a generous producer. The money shows on screen. The films toplined by most of the over-40 male superstar brigade usually look pretty low-rent these days, with tackily filmed songs and ugly sets. You just know that most of these films' giant budgets have gone straight into the pockets of their middle-aged leading men. But Khan actually wants to, at the very least, put on a good-looking show. He doesn't callously assume that the adoring fans will show up no matter how shoddily assembled the product is just because he's starring in it. Farah Khan, of course, is a deft hand with the only-at-the-movies spectacle; here, she serves it up in enormous, candy-colored heapings. You definitely want to see the aerial shots of Dubai all lit up on a big, big screen. Take food and a pillow, though, if you go. Seriously, I felt like I was in there for years.

5) The song sequences are pretty fun, but I really wish the staging and choreography had been more inventive. Remember the Farah Khan who shot Main Hoon Na's Chale Jaise Hawaein in one long, uninterrupted take? Remember her gloriously manic technicolor qawwali from the same film? I miss that Farah.

6) Speaking of Main Hoon Na, is it possible that Farah's never made a film since that hit her debut's sublime meta-masala high because she worked with a writer who could actually write on that one? Her subsequent films have had good gags here and there, but haven't worked as a coherent whole. Main Hoon Na, too, featured the over-the-top patriotism and the revenge plot that Happy New Year relies on, but those tropes worked because the characters felt like people, not accessories in extended comedy bits, and the world of the film felt fully realized, as loony as it was. (Hit Abbas Tyrewala up again, Farah! Or maybe Anurag Kashyap, since he's obviously willing to do crazy stuff for you! Anurag, good on you for being so game in your cameo, but that cross-dressing gag was not cool.) 

Related: Who would've thought that Rohit Shetty would make a better masala comedy with Shah Rukh Khan in the lead than Farah Khan? I'm just as shocked as anybody else.

7) I used to think self-referential Bollywood in-jokes were so funny and clever back in the early 2000s, but with this film, I think I'm completely over them, especially in SRK's movies. Keep those arms firmly pinned to your side, SRK. Never repurpose DDLJ quotes again, SRK.

8) Sonu Sood is the modern-day Vinod Khanna, right? Impossibly handsome, totally underrated, and with that unmissable quality of solid, heroic decency. Let's make Sonu Sood a star! (I actually kinda wanted Sonu and Deepika's characters to get together. He was so nice to her!) Also, while we're on the subject of handsome, underrated dudes, more Jackie Shroff, please. This film gives him a bit more to do than Dhoom 3, and his character here, a straight-up villain, is way more likable than the daft fool he played in that dull film. Dude knows how to chew up some primo scenery. Anyone who wants "I support the Shroffaissance" buttons and T-shirts, get in touch with me.

9) Abhishek is basically playing Uday Chopra's character from the Dhoom series here. He does it as well as Uday. (This is a compliment. Uday was, no lie, the best thing about Dhoom 3. By this point, you might have guessed that I did not much care for Dhoom 3.)

10)  I wasn't the only one rooting for the team of cute children to win the Indian rounds of the World Dance Championship, right? Those little girls looked so crestfallen when they lost!