Happy New Year (I) (2014)
10/10
Flawless
25 October 2014
Farah Khan made a flawless movie. Every single bit of this entertainer is perfect. It's an entertainer. Not a deep movie. And it entertains extremely well.

1st SRK - Farah directs him wonderfully. There are no cringe worthy moments in this film. She gives us the gratuitous shots of SRK early on and 1 ups herself from the Darr de Disco sequence in Om Shanti Om. And once again it was hysterically funny, provided for character development and was superb eye candy all at the same time. This was a wonderful role for SRK.

Abhishek - Farah uses his talents perfectly. And I mean perfectly! Wow! Double role! The guy is a chameleon and completely inhabits every role he plays. Put him in a new costume and he is that new person. He is a superb actor and was wonderful and watching him play off SRK was delightful.

Deepika - This is one of the best performances I've seen from her. She is a fabulous actress, but this role required a surprising emotional depth from her and Farah was able to get that and capture that wonderfully.

Boman Irani - I love the role she wrote for him. He played it perfectly and, again Farah nailed it both in terms of direction, actor choice and - well everything.

Sonu Sood - His job is action star eye candy. He gets type cast a lot. Still - he was wonderful in it. At some point I would like to see him given a meatier role as he is capable of so much more than just being eye candy. But again, hats off to Farah for exploiting the eye candy thing within the movie itself.

Jackie Shroff - he's perfect in his role. I love watching him act. He's great.

Vivaan Shah - youngest of our crew - I was not familiar with him before. He was good and delivered the performance he was supposed to (he's more of a supporting role and given the high octane actors who was playing with in ensemble, he got a bit lost - but I don't think that's Farah's fault. He had plenty of scenes where he was the scene and he played them extremely well.

Choreography. I love Farah's choreography. I love that she got Prabhudeva to do a cameo & the entire gotta dance montage was beautiful! The final dance sequence was amazing and left me wishing I had been rich enough to fly to one of the cities to see these people perform it live on stage during the slam tour. Realized I am going to go to my grave regretting that I didn't.

Action sequences - Sonu Sood's early battle is fabulous. I'm curious to know why steam was coming out of only one ear. But this scene took every Hindi battle sequence ever made where our hero is surrounded, and put it up a notch. It was funny, it was cool, it was sexy - I love Farah! How she got the shirt off Sonu was really really funny. I like that she is able to deliver everything we want in a movie with grace, humor and in a way that forwards character development - for the entire ensemble!

I can't believe she did used Kung Fu Fighting at one point (the song) but I loved the way she borrowed from the ending of Don (with SRK) for this sequence - especially since she had Boman in an onlooker role for the sequence. It was funny and scary and beautifully shot and the Jackie Chan sequence with the table that the borrowed was again, beautifully done.

They say the best artists know who to steal from. Farah does. And with movies, it's not what you steal, it's how you steal it and make it your own. Farah is a MASTER! She is even at the point where she can steal from herself (with the ballroom sequence from Om Shanti Om - which is nothing like that except that she steals the music and the rotation - and has Deepika and SRK in the center of everything).

This was a flawless movie. Everything about it was perfect. It was hysterically funny, well made, a fabulous ensemble and I left the movie positively giddy. I haven't felt this way coming out of a movie since I saw Streets of Fire when I was a teen. Well done Farah! Thank you for making this movie.
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