Happy Patel: Khatarnak Jasoos Review: Vir Das Deserves Better.

• What Happy Patel: Khatarnak Jasoos is about

  If a fictional British intelligence service, MI7, wanted to rescue one of their citizens trapped in India, would they not send one of the surplus Indians floating around the UK to rescue her?

  In this film, Happy Patel: Khatarnak Jasoos, they train a man raised by Brits, in ‘Indian skills’ like haggling, Shah Rukh Khan mimickry and just enough Hindi to get by and throw him into Goa! You know it’s Goa because everyone says, ‘what men’.If that Indian is Vir Das, putting on a faux Brit accent, and mispronouncing Hindi words to make them sound profane, then there is a spoofy comedy called Happy Patel: Khatarnak Jasoos.

  For reasons no other than that Aamir Khan wanted to play a Goan gangster and say ‘men’ after every sentence, and cause the death of Happy’s mother in a shootout, the kid ends up being adopted by two British spies.

  He grew up in England, with ballet dancing and cooking as his skills. Both come in handy in Goa later! The anything-goes tone is set right at the start as men with guns drawn stop fighting when the maid wants to sweep the room!

  The gangster staggers home dying of a bullet wound and the wife wants to know why he didn’t bring sausages!

  His daughter takes over the gang operations and comes to be called Mama (Mona Singh), who watches cookery videos, makes cutlets and hopes to be an entrepreneur. She also happens to have the British national hidden away so Happy and Mama are fated to meet. She is called Mama, so that every time her henchmen say, ‘Hum Mama se aaye hain‘, Happy can retort, ‘Hum sab mama se aaye hain!‘

Happy Patel: Khatarnak Jasoos‘s running gag

Written by Vir Das and Amogh Ranadive, directed by Das and Kavi Shastri (two needed to cook this gooey mash!), Happy Patel goes on in this nonsensical vein. Some of it is funny. There is a running gag when a man called Tom turns up every time Happy says ‘tom‘ instead of ‘tum’ or with his newly-learnt haggling skills, actually rips off a cabbie trying to overcharge him.

But then Mama getting three men to sing loudly out of tune to torture her prisoners is just painful!

Happy’s ‘local coordinator’ is a burly Sardar, Geet (Sharib Hashmi), who runs a restaurant with one table and one creaky old waiter, and Geet’s assistant is a computer geek, Roxy (Srushti Tawade).

Happy’s love interest is a slap-happy bad dancer, Rupa (Mithila Palkar), whose wardrobe could be either terrible taste or Goan hippie chic. Imran Khan, perhaps in preparation for a return to the screen, gets one action scene in a guest appearance (all in the family only, men!)

Happy Patel: Khatarnak Jasoos does get some laughs

Happy Patel is not supposed to make sense, and doesn’t even pretend to. But most of the time, it is trying too hard — which ruins any comedy — and the jokes fall flat. Still, the silliness is layered with such good cheer that it does get some laughs.

Vir Das — never letting that London NRI accent drop — brings out his stand-up comedy confidence to the game, and nobody else can match his energy. With his screen presence and enviable comic talent, he deserves a better film.

Key Points

• Happy Patel is Vir Das’ directorial debut. He has written the comedy as well, and also stars in it.
• Aamir Khan and his nephew Imran Khan put in cameos.
• Some of the jokes fall flat but Happy Patel does get some laughs as well.