Happy New Year

Enough and more branding, some good humor portions, predictable story line, clichéd sentiments and an overall okay feel – that’s what Happy New Year from Farah Khan is all about. Most of the fun factor in the movie was things beyond the “story” part of the film. Well a 3 hour long movie managing to keep the viewer interested in it is itself a great achievement.

It is basically a revenge story. Charlie is the central protagonist here and he is living the life of a wrestler. Charlie has a past which isn’t pleasing due to certain personal loses. The film shows us the scenario where Charlie gets an opportunity to take his revenge by stealing 300 crores worth diamonds from Dubai. To get an access to the place where the diamonds are kept, the only possible way is to take part in the world dance competition. How him and his men along with a girl who passionately loves dance manages to get an entry there and steal the diamonds is what Happy New Year talking about.

What Farah Khan has done here is that she mixed her OSO treatment in a heist movie. Much like those parallel comedy track in OSO (like the award function videos), you get to see a lot of off the film references which kind of looks good on screen. You have Shah Rukh saying dialogues from his own films. There is a Chak De spoof by Deepika which was funny. It is not a totally illogical film like Tees Maar Khan, but you can question certain phases of the robbery for sure. But by filling the nearby portions with laughable comedy, Farah succeeds in keeping us less skeptical. I wonder how Saroj Khan would react after seeing that dance thing. Jokes which Saif and Shah Rukh used to use in Filmfare awards were also there. Nothing surprising was there about the robbery part.

Making wise Farah has tried to go back to her OSO style and was successful up to an extent. The jokes at times looked over done. I wasn’t that impressed by the story part in comparison to other Farah films excluding TMK. Script can take the credit for not being a boring one. No catchy dialogues this time from the team. Music was enjoyable but not as memorable as other films from Farah – Vishal & Shekhar combo. Edits were good. Art direction was superb. Neat visual effects from red chilies.

Well Shah Rukh has done his part nicely. More than the acting I liked his body (which doesn’t look fake). Deepika Padukone did a fab job in terms of acting and dancing. Boman Irani as always did it with ease. Sonu Sood gets to do something beyond his usual Bhaiyya/Villain character. Surprisingly Abhishek Bachchan did perform and was able to make the audience laugh. Vivaan Shah doesn’t have a complex role or something but the actor was good. Jackie Shroff also did a good performance.

So overall Happy New Year is a one time watch that can meet the expectations of the audience who are in a festive mood. My rating is 2.5/5 for this Farah Khan entertainer. As always Farah’s end credits sequence is something you should not miss and for those “Awwww” female fans of SRK, there is something for you at the very end of the movie.