Be Happy
Director: Remo D’Souza
Starring: Amitabh Bachchan, Nora Fatehi, Abhishek Bachchan, Johny Lever
As expected, Remo D’Souza’s new film erroneously entitled Be Happy has a lot to do with dancing . One would have expected Remo to move forward since ABCD (to perhaps EFGH?) . But Be Happy remains rigidly rooted to an elementary school of thought. The writing, though benign, is facile and innocuously manipulative.
Putting a beautiful expressive talented motherless little dancer at the centre of the plot, and then thrusting a fatal illness on her, is exploitative enough. Hitting for the tear duct over and over again becomes a bit of an exercise in futility when it is done inorganically.
The element of artifice creeps in uncomfortably at moments when we are meant to be most emotionally moved. The film doesn’t lack emotions. But their sincerity seems ceaselessly suspect. Abhishek Bachchan, who did the father-daughter act in his last film, the indisputably brilliant I Want To Talk with sterling conviction, seems ill at ease here, and not only because he has to be the reluctant dancer for his ailing daughter. Abhishek doesn’t have much to say in Be Happy. I don’t think he wants to talk. The script doesn’t enthuse him into edifying conversations.
Adding to the weight of wispiness is the gifted veteran actor, Nasser, playing the “cool” granddad to offset Abhishek’s chronic grumpiness. It is an absolutely surprising setup; the only surprise is the absence of any novelty.
The cliches flow out in a trite trickle of treacliness.
Some self-control is severely needed! But it is not entirely a loss. Between them, Abhishek Bachchan and Inayat Verma work out at least two beautifully performed two-handlers in which their roles as guardian and child are reversed. Here we witness a fluency of expression lacking in the rest of the film.
Even the choreography is not what we would expect from Remo. The dance at the climax and the climax itself verge on the preposterous. Defying all medical guidelines, not to mention the insult to common sense, Abhishek and Inayat (seen together to far greater advantage in Anurag Basu’s Ludo) get on stage to do a Shiva tandav. It is a ground breaking experience , quite literally.
Of yes! Nora Fatehi, for those who like a bit of firangi tadka in their desi glee, is also there. But the performance which catches our attention for all the wrong reasons is Nasser whose hammy interpretation of grandfatherly gusto is sobering, to say the least.
Be Happy isn’t entire bereft of joy. But it is way too unambitious and vanilla-sweet to cope with the cutthroat competition. It’s like singing a nursery rhyme in a reality show.
