Its not so bad that you’ll want to run away from the hall before it reaches its intermission but with its forced humor, over-acted performances and ultimately weak script – there is little in Happy Bhaag Jayegi that leaves you grinning ear to ear.
What starts off as a fresh approach to what may seem as an Indian version of The Runaway Bride, morphs every 20 minutes into something that is hard to connect with or feel a part of. Character development is practically non-existent and while there is definite potential with the setup, there is a marked lack of finesse in the execution – leaving pretty much everything up to the performances.
Unfortunately, the performances disappoint as well. Abhay Deol, otherwise Mr. Dependable, is surprisingly way off key – especially in the first half. Jimmy Shergill has a fairly straight forward character and he does fair justice to it. Happy, played quite sincerely by Diana Penty is supposed to be the hallmark of the show, but try as she does – Diana fails to deliver her lines naturally. She is quite the pretty picture to look at and her expression is mostly right, but the dialogue delivery disappoints, especially as a Punjabi kudi, she just doesn't make the cut. Apart from that there is Faizal Khan who has a barely noticeable role and Momal Sheikh who's role demanded a better actor. Finally, there is Piyush Mishra, who is a pleasure to watch despite the side act. However, saddled with mostly unfunny lines and situations, there is little that he can do beyond a point.
Humor is perhaps the toughest to pull off – so I’d still applaud the attempt to generate some clean humor. This one is totally a family movie with not one scene being ‘kids unfriendly’. The only problem is I don’t know how much even the kids are going to enjoy this one.
The background score makes all the suggestions that something very funny is about to be done or said, but that rarely happens. Instead, it becomes a crutch to hold up what little humor there is in a particular scene. There are digs on the India Pakistan relationship, Pakistan in general and when it reaches a point of making jokes on the Urdu language – the desperation to make you laugh is clear as day.
The songs, while somewhat melodious, don’t help matters much and only lengthen the already tedious proceedings. Thankfully they move in line with the narrative so they don’t slow things as much. Happy Bhag Gayee is a case of great potential, that is completely squandered away. There are other films that have done this kind of stuff and done it far better. Unfortunately, that’s the only thought you come away with after the roughly 2 hours runtime.
That said, I do feel that if movies like ‘Mere Brother ki Dulhan’ and ‘Dolly ki Doli’ were up your alley, you’d probably enjoy this one too. However, if you are hoping for something more, then Happy Bhag Jayegi is not the one to run to.
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