Happy New Year is a big Indian celebration with the same sort of jokes, recycled moments and flamboyant sets and dance numbers, but still a big party nevertheless.
Happy New Year is currently showing at Major Ekamai, Rama 3, Paragon and Central Embassy.
It is also, by far, going to be your best ticket to a three-hour tour of the super-bling of Dubai — better than what their own tourism hoopla can come up with and every single minute of it is captivating.
This third collaboration between Shah Rukh Khan and director Farah Khan, like their previous mega-hits Main Hoon Na and Om Shanti Om, is packed to the brim with the MSG of Indian movies that want to join the Bollywood 100 Crore Club: excess, opulence and extravagance from glittering backdrops and larger-than-life songs. It masks Shah Rukh Khan's true potential as an actor and the not-so-magnetic music, although Lovely and Manwa Laage are catchy enough tunes to go home with.
In this happy heist film — it's happy because you don't have to deal with complicated logic — Charlie (Shah Rukh Khan) wants to avenge his father by breaking into the Shalimar safe to rob a handful of the world's most precious diamonds.
His "angels" consist of Tammy (Boman Irani), the safe-cracker who seems to get epileptic seizures at all the wrong times; Rohan (Vivaan Shah), the nerdy computer hacker; Jag (Sonu Sood), the mega-buff, bomb-defusing buddy and Nandu (Abhishek Bachchan), a drunkard that happens to look like the villain's son and can puke whenever and wherever. The glossy song and dance fix comes from the little detail that the group have to enter the World Dance Championships in order to gain access to the backstage area that can lead to the vault.
Their beguiling saviour that teaches them to dance a little better beyond moronic jiggling comes in the form of bar dancer Mohini (Deepika Padukone), who's so bewitchingly gorgeous you'll completely forget that everything seems a little too similar to Ocean's Eleven.
It's a lot of laugh-out-loud fun, mostly coming from Bachchan, who's proving to be quite a capable comedian. If you want a well thought-out plot line and moving Khan-style love story, you're in here for all the wrong reasons.
Happy New Year is all about its eye candy: in the rock-hard abs, sexy item pieces, and grand production know-how that possibly exceeds all of Southeast Asia's film industry put together.
And stop whining about Khan succumbing to hammy roles already. We know King Khan can act grippingly — we've seen so when he starred as a Muslim with mild Asperger's living in America post 9/11 in My Name Is Khan and as a non-romantic hockey coach in Chak De! India. Let him milk his cow while those eight-packs are still there and when he can still pass off as the hero. The "commercial crap" won't last forever, so don't be a sourpuss and just let this feel-good flick give you a good time.
Happy New Year is currently showing at Major Ekamai, Rama 3, Paragon and Central Embassy.
