Happy Phirr Bhag Jayegi Review: Sonakshi Sinha screeches and screams her way through this mundane film

By Shreehari H 

“All is Fair and Lovely in love and war”, this is an aphorism that Jimmy Shergill’s character in Happy Phirr Bhag Jayegi, a ruffian moonlighting as a politician says as he claims to be a man who lives life on his own terms. “Myself Daman Singh Bagga,” this man who plays dumb charades while referring to it as monopoly reminds us, and he’s a stickler for the simple present tense to boot. “You can talks to me. You can chats to me,” Shergill says to a character at one point with all the reassurance that he can muster. For those of us who were unfortunate enough to sit through director Mudassar Aziz’s previous film in this forgettable franchise, the invitation is one worth declining.

Sonakshi Sinha plays Harpreet Kaur, an academic who has been invited to speak about horticulture at a University in Shanghai. In a case of mistaken identity, Sinha’s “happy” finds herself embroiled in a controversy over a deal for a hydropower project which has fallen into the wrong hands, leading to many Chinese gangsters hot on her tail, as the other Happy – played by Diana Penty – finds herself unwittingly fielding questions on the future of bonsai in China. “Amritsar ke har doosre ghar mein har teesri ladki ka naam hota hain Harpreet. Happy. Main woh Happy nahi hoon jise tum dhoondh rahe ho,” Sinha screeches and screams at one of these gangsters, which can be the plot summary of the film. Piyush Mishra’s Urdu-spouting Usman Afridi reprises his role from the previous movie, as does Ali Fazal’s Guddu, and Jassi Gill makes an appearance as Khushwant Singh Gill (“Khushi” for short).

Happy Phirr Bhag Jayegi quickly devolves into a labyrinthine, farcical mess that it never really recovers from. This is a film with dialogues like “Mera naam Chang hai, Chinese nahi”, “Har cheez duplicate milti hai China mein”, “We love China but China no like us” and “Aap log nikaal lo. Apne apne ghar, apne apne embassy,” showcasing the amateurish writing of the film. Although Penty, Mishra and Shergill valiantly try and inject some spark into the leaden proceedings, they are unable to redeem it.

The most unforgivable crime here, however, might lie in how the film frequently spoofs far more noted Hindi films – The Legend of Bhagat Singh, Aap Ki Kasam, Mughal-e-Azam, Jeet and Howrah Bridge, to name but a few.

“Khub khub kaam kar,” Sinha’s onscreen father declares while wishing his daughter good luck, and the irony of this statement couldn’t have been more pronounced. In a career spanning over a decade now, Sinha has consistently relegated herself to on-screen mediocrity with an air of determined aloofness, delivering substandard movies with assembly-line efficiency. From Action Jackson to Son of Sardar, from Rowdy Rathore to Welcome to New York.

For an actress who delivered such a heartfelt performance in Vikramaditya Motwane’s Lootera – arguably one of the finest Hindi films of the decade – it’s genuinely heartbreaking to see her play one dumb character after another. While the grapevine is abuzz with news of Sinha being roped in for Prabhu Deva’s Dabangg 3 the trend unlikely to reverse anytime soon.

Rating: 2 out of 5

Shreehari H is a lover of films and an even greater lover of writing.