Can you imagine a heady mocktail of
stylised Urdu and fizz filled Punjabi? That is exactly what Mudassar Aziz
offers you. Talk India – Pak then we invariably talk of either war or cricket
and one of the dullest cricketers (albeit with commitment) was another
Muddassar. This Muddassar ensures he makes up for all the dull moments his part
names sake offered. Thematically films on the bordering neighbour invariably
dealt with either jingoism and chest beating heroics or in more recent times a
Bhaijaan with a heart of gold or even a slap stick like Tere Bin Laden. This
time you have a product that meets the rich traditions of a Hrishida and Gulzar
and yet keeps the pulse of a Priyadarshan. Surely in times to come when we list
the better comedies of Hindi cinema this will be counted.
Hilarious throughout its running time of just over two hours, it ensures that
the sensitive cross border relationship is not strained or exploited. On the
other hand, it eschews the political area and gives you a Wodehouseian comedy. There
has not been such classy humour for a while in Hindi cinema. I had to go
through the ordeal of a Telugu comedy earlier in the day and this came as a
study in contrast.
The situational comedy, through to its genre is not so much about the story.
The story line is about a feisty Punjabi gal Happy (Diana Penty) who runs away
from her wedding and refuses to marry her groom in waiting – the local
Corporator Bagga (Jimmy Shergill) Waiting outside a la Prithvi Raj Chauhan is
her boyfriend Guddu (Ali Fazal – doing a perfect Bertie Wooster). Things go
wrong when she jumps down the balcony from the wrong side and gets into a fruit
basket intended to be part of the good will exchange with Pak heavy weight
politician Javed Ahmed (Javed Sheik). Sr. Ahmed has political dreams for his
son Bilal (Abhay Deol). He predicts that he would be that momentous change
Pakistan is waiting for – the next Jinnah. Bilal is engaged to Zoya (Momal
Shiekh) another heavy weight in Lahore. The alliance is a top level political
arrangement between the families with Zoya hopelessly and jealously in love
with Bilal just as Baggha is with Happy. Happy unwittingly lands up in Lahore
and unlike the locals is too boisterous and unwilling to be the quiet person.
Meanwhile in India Bagga has kidnapped Guddu and held him ransom to ensure the
return of Happy. Now Bilal takes up the task of coming to India using his
connections and entices Guddu a musician to go over to Lahore. When thing have
to go wrong they will and thus everything goes wrong in every ones’ scheme of
things leading to a Blandings Castle finale.
What makes the film hilarious is not just the dialogues and the fine sense of
balance that Mudassar gets on board but the fine performances from the entire
cast. Jimmy Shergill may well be ghost walking from his Tanu Weds Manu script,
but his presence is such a delight. Ali Fazal is just adequate without looking
like the needless dud we make of the ‘also rans’ in our cinema. Kanwaljeet as
Papaji is good as is Javed Sheik. Special good news for the fans of the Deol.
Abhay has always lent a high degree of credibility to his roles. He does that
again. Two superlative performances come from Piyush Misra as Usman Afridi –
Bilal’s blundering assistant and Momal Sheik as his fiancé.
It has surely been a while since I got to watching a hilarious comedy from
Bollywood. This sure is one that will be somewhere in the middle layers of the
short list of good comedies. We do not get them once too often. We need to make
good use of the rare opportunity and savour the moments.
Rating: 3.5 stars.
+ Performances, style
– Not much
L. Ravichander.