No laughing matter
Many a head will turn if you yell ‘Happy!’ at an Amritsar wedding. It is the kind of name Punjabis affectionately bestow on man, woman and Alsatian alike. For some reason, Daman Singh Bagga, played by Jimmy Shergill, finds himself drawn to girls of that name. He was smitten by one in Mudassar Aziz’s Happy Bhag Jayegi (2016), and he once again finds himself in haphazard pursuit of Happy-ness in the sequel.
The first film starred Diana Penty as a runaway bride named Happy. Now Sonakshi Sinha plays a different Happy, a girl so given to scowling that her parents clearly got it wrong. So did the film’s makers.
The original was surprisingly fizzy, where the plot made little sense yet there were giggles.
This time the plot involves kidnapped girls, policemen and Punjabi businessmen. The wildgoose chase is set in Shanghai.
Sinha looks confused from the start, walking out of an airport open-mouthed and staying that way till the end. The film’s hero is a mild-mannered fellow who sings at open-mic events, but while the character may have a simple charm, Jassi Gill is so unremarkable that I have already forgotten him.
Happy Phirr Bhag Jayegi relies too hard on obvious attempts at humour at the expense of the Chinese characters — from their names conveniently made to sound like expletives, to the way Indian characters can’t tell them apart. This is lazy, juvenile and unnecessary.