Somewhere in merry England lives Happy, a nice guy who can assemble a nifty sandwich which pleases his British dads enormously. They go ummm, chewing beatifically. He can also execute a mean on pointe, in his powder-pink ballet shoes. Everything seems to be going swimmingly with the lad, but all of a sudden he has this feeling of something ‘missing’.
Cue, the deep, dark secret that’s been kept hidden all these years, with Happy (Vir Das) slack-jawed at discovering that he is Indian (‘no, not Paki, that’s not the same’). You’d expect him to know the difference, but clearly he needs telling, and that in turn tells us that he’s a sweet sort of doofus, who as an infant was carted back to the home country by his dads who were tooling around Goa on a mysterious mission, because they made a promise to his dying mom, a house-proud domestic worker (Sumukhi Suresh) who wields a mean jharoo.
If that sounds a bit bananas, it is meant to. Because this is a Vir Das film, holding out the promise of hilarity dipped in jokes-and-punchlines, stretched over two hours. So of course, Happy’s arrival in sunny Goa is heralded by a dancing girl (Mithila Parkar), a friendly Sardar (Sharib Hashmi) and a curly-haired moppet (Shrushti Tawade). A female don (Mona Singh) lurks, cooking up deadly cutlets and feeding them to her gaggle of goons.
At stake is Britain’s weapon of mass destruction, a fairness cream it wants to unleash upon unsuspecting former subjects. Said cream is being whipped up in the don’s den, and somewhere in between a bumbling Happy playing at being a bumbling spy on the trail of the cream’s kidnapped originator, there’s a film which wants to be about everything: identity, racism, colourism, masculinity, gender roles, parenthood, and freedom.
The trouble with so many ideas jostling in the film, written by Das and Amogh Ranadive, is that very little gets to breathe. Just as something is about to settle in, off it darts in another direction. The result is a film in running around in circles, in search of its self: you feel like saying ‘hey, hey the gang’s all here’ when Aamir Khan and Imran Khan pitching in mad, totally over-the-top cameos (Kunaal Roy Kapoor comes on for a flash, too), and taking you back to the ‘Delhi Belly’ boys and their shenanigans. But that film never lost sight of its funny bone; this one is almost all over the place.
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Das speaks in broken Hindi laced with a British accent, and in a few places the risible usages can make you smile, but the whole schtick mostly reminds us that even the funniest stand-up lines can become a stretch. There’s a great joke you can spot wrapped up in one of the threads, though: you wonder how the thin-skinned CBFC let it through, unless they missed it, just as they missed the real import of the Bhaag D K Bose ditty. Mona Singh as the don, in her crisp hair-do and short dress, and the terse ‘update, men’, giving off a very everything everywhere all at once vibe, is a hoot. In his short-lived cameo, Aamir — whose crotch thrust still remains legendary — nearly runs away with the film, upping the ante effortlessly. But most of the others, which includes the most excellent Hashmi, are left fumbling.
The film, which also wants to be a send up of creaky Bollywood tropes — the number of ‘tight slaps’ delivered on the hapless Happy’s cheek could easily make Rohit Shetty proud — could well be read as a defiant shout-out by one of our sharpest, most politically astute comics who had to re-claim his Indian-ness by sprinkling Bharat-ki-mitti on several videshi stages after he was savagely pilloried by trolls post his two Indias monologue.
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When Vir’s Not-So-Khatarnak-Jasoos Happy says, I’m home, it is unexpectedly moving. But there’s not enough of that tone which it is clearly aiming at — Bollywood Burlesque with the beats of emotional atyachaar — in the film: ultimately, the just-right spoofy bits come up only in spurts in the rest, you keep wishing for more of the silliness to land. Yes, us Indians eat with our hands, and no, that’s not enough of a joke.
Happy Patel Khatarnak Jasoos movie cast: Vir Das, Sharib Hashmi, Mithila Palkar, Mona Singh, Srushti Tawade, Sumukhi Suresh, Imran Khan, Aamir Khan
Happy Patel Khatarnak Jasoos movie director: Vir Das, Kavi Shastri
Happy Patel Khatarnak Jasoos movie rating: 2 stars
