Hai Jawani Toh Ishq Hona Hai
Starring: Varun Dhawan, Pooja Hegde, and Mrunal Thakur
Directed by David Dhawan
Dhawan, and only David, is back with a full-on masti ki tokri, about a chokra and two chokris…. This is the kind of bumper sticker poetry that flows out of David Dhawan’s uncapped youth-paste. A rush of risible situations that add up to nothing, except harmless fun. Provided you are not looking for political correctness.
I’ve always found David’s films to be more cuddlesome than his successors like Priyadarshan and Anees Bazmee. David has a firm grip over the giggles and a fine control over the cosmos of comic chaos where the protagonist is a bit of a jerk, say, a mix of Kishore Kumar and Kapil Sharma, with a bit of Mehmood thrown in.
Varun is as much a slippery rogue as Salman Khan in Biwi No 1 and Akshay Kumar in Mujhse Shaadi Karoge. Barun’s Jass is a bit of an ass (no, that doesn’t rhyme). Seeing his monkeyish antics, no one is surprised when his pert wife, Baani (Mrunal Thakur), decides to divorce him.
“It’s not that he doesn’t love me. He loves me too much. He wants to make love to me all the time,” Baani tells the judge (Asgar Ali) whose fruitcake behaviour in the courtroom would offend only those lawyers who have never seen any of David Dhawan’s kooky comedies.
That David still has the ability to make us giggle, and sometimes chortle, says a lot about his artful humor.
Edited with sly smartness, Hai Jawani, etc., moves at a frenetic pace, with lots of physical comedy, none of it injurious to the health. David Dhawan gives us no opportunity to question the absurdities of plot that adlibs brazenly.
The screenplay (Yunus Sajawal) is borderline demented, with Varun Dhawan’s Jass impregnating two women at the same time. No, no, not what you think. It’s not a menage a trois (giggle giggle), nothing so radical for Dhawan. The David brand of humour remains innocuous even when there are generous references to condoms and making love this time, it all feels… clean. A human version of a doll’ s house with characters who appear to be heavily sedated in their woozy hijinks in la la land.
Somehow DD’s brand of comedy remains, shall we say, wholesome. Some, like Mouni Roy playing a risque item girl, masquerading as Varun Dhawan’s mother and falling in love with his father-in-law-to-be Jimmy Shergil, is genuinely ticklish. Others, like Manish Paul’s gay act to get the hero out of a sticky situation is mildly offensive. Being gay is definitely not being happy in Hindi cinema.
Just like this week’s other release Peddi, Hai Jawani, etc is a one-man show. Young Dhawan is all over the place, creating humorous havoc, even though we all know that bigamy is not fun or funny. But please, let’s not look too deep into the unstoppered antics for political correctness. Why not just have unconditional fun with the Dhawans as they take us on a joyride through a labyrinth of prankish absurdities where two women, unaware that the share the same man, become friends. It almost feels like a send up on Yash Chopra’s Daag… If only bigamy was more fun..
Watch out for the cameos by a cluster of comic virtuosos playing Varun Dhawan’s school teachers from the past, giving him gyan on how to conduct himself during a crisis. Looks like they didn’t do a very good job of it.
