First thing you need to do when watching Happy Bhag Jayegi is keep all politics aside. It’s about India and Pakistan, but as one of the characters says, we can talk about anything; except Kashmir. For some politics nerds that may be an impossible task. This movie is not for them.
Although, weirdly, the central protagonist, played by Abhay Deol, is a budding politician. A reluctant one. He just happens to be a Lahori. He discovers a runaway bride from India in his home one day. She is the Happy of the title who has run away from a marriage with Jimmy Shergil. She wanted to run to her boyfriend played by Ali Zafar in Amritsar but ended up in Lahore instead.
What follows is a good old fashioned comedy about people going on missions, people running around, bumbling cops, even more bumbling goons, a suspicious fiancée, a couple of loyal household servants, and a whole lot of fun.
Happy Bhag Jayegi seems like a Hrishikesh Mukherjee film. Not only because it is light hearted and fun, but because it is so good natured.
This is a movie filled with nice people. Piyush Mishra plays a Pakistani cop as such an endearing mess that this film will either be a huge hit there or be banned.
And here we are talking about politics again. Oh well. So Happy Bhag Jayegi shows two kinds of young politicians: the son of an ex governor of Lahore who actually wanted to be a cricketer, and a corporator from Amritsar who actually is a thug. That’s it. That’s all the politics I will talk about. That’s not what this film is about.
Happy Bhag Jayegi is about people. Two in particular. Happy, who is impulsive, cooky, brave, and loads of fun. And Bilal, played by Abhay (The outcast Deol), who is sedate, tormented, and not rebellious at all. It’s about their journey, literal and metaphorical. As they travel in space, they move either towards or away from where they want to be.
I was mesmerised by a lot of characters in Happy Bhag Jayegi. But the ones not mentioned above will stay with you. Piyush Mishra, playing a Lahore cop, is even more memorable than usual. He creates an enchanting cop in the tradition of comic cops like Dhurandhar Bhatawadekar. But the one who stole the show for me was Momal Sheikh as Zoya, Bilal’s finance. She enters as a jealous girlfriend, but leaves as probably the strongest character in the film, someone with deep understanding of not just the man she loves but the whole complicated tangle love and attraction are. She brings this back from Hrishida’s times to the modern era.
But Hrishi da smiles throughout this funny chaos. As did I. No, just kidding. I actually laughed my way through it. And never once thought about the Indo-Pak politics. You shouldn’t either.