Happy Patel: Khatarnak Jasoos has scenes that are hilarious and scenes that the makers think are hilarious. Hope is the abiding emotion in Vir Das’s co-creation, in which he also stars as a British spy of Indian heritage.
Happy (Das) is adopted as an infant and raised in London. Having seemingly never met any other Indians during his years there, Happy is shocked when he learns of his background.
No offence is meant here – this is an absurdist comedy, stuffed with non sequiturs and nonsensical situations. Happy is recruited to rescue a kidnapped British inventor behind a revolutionary fairness cream. After a crash course in spycraft, one of whose lessons is that Indians don’t eat with spoons, Austin Powers’s bastard child turns up in the Capital of Cliche in the Land of Cliches.
In Goa’s Panjore – standing in for Panaji – Happy’s main adversary is the doness Mama (Mona Singh), who’s fond of cutlets and ending her sentences with “Man”. Happy also meets his handler Geet (Sharib Hashmi), who relays instructions via tea slurping noises, and Roxy (Srushti Tawde), the handler’s handler. While bumbling about, Happy loses his heart to the dancer Rupa (Mithali Palkar).
Written by Das and Amogh Ranadive and co-directed by Das and Kavi Shastri, the film’s running gag is Happy’s mangling of Hindi. Happy speaks the national language terribly with a dodgy British accent, which is the chief – and often only – source of laughs.
The initial giggles over lines that confuse genders and swear words with everyday objects die out soon enough. Happy’s linguistic skills remain stubbornly on par with his investigative abilities. The film is less steady or focused – again, this scattershot approach is by design.
The idea seems to be to out-stereotype already-stereotyped Goans as well as parody films about super-achieving spies on world-altering missions, NRIs who have rediscovered their motherland, the Indian obsession with fair skin, Shah Rukh Khan’s open-armed gesture. Add to the list what you will and Happy will be happy to include it.
So silly that it’s juvenile and sometimes so anarchic that it almost escapes notice, the 121-minute Happy Patel takes refuge behind its conceit. This is a film about nothing pretending to be about something. That could be taken as one of the sharpest aspect of the movie, and also its chief defence against exhaustion over Happy’s refusal to speak decent Hindi or the indifferent material handed out to any character who isn’t Happy.
Vir Das hogs the show, occasionally ceding moments to Sharib Hashmi or Srushti Tawde. Das ably conveys the anything-goes mood, and maintains an air of cheerful mayhem along with his co-director. But the movie isn’t outre enough to send up writer-director-actors who don’t realise when a comedy routine has run its course.
Mithila Palkar is given so little to work with that her character might well have not existed. There are cameos for Aamir Khan, strenuously vamping it as Mama’s daddy, and Imran Khan, trying to strenuously vamp it as an international super-model.
