Vir Das' Happy Patel: Khatarnak Jasoos Is A Good Hang

VIR DAS is a lot of things. He is an actor, host, stand-up comic, and author. He is also an Indian who carries the country to the world. A chunk of his comedic set pieces expands on this familiarity to critique (Two Indias) and swathe the nation with nostalgic afterglow (For India). By doing so, Das occupies an interstitial space where he is both an outsider and an insider, possessing an objective gaze with subjective bias. His directorial debut, Happy Patel: Khatarnak Jasoos, is a culmination of this hybrid status. The genre-defying film is shaped by a humour that is homegrown yet specific, impossible to distil yet improbable to ignore. And much like its creator, it is a lot.

Helmed by Kavi Shastri and Das (both had worked together as actors in Imtiaz Ali’s 2009 Love Aaj Kal), Happy Patel is a nutty, chaotic comedy that is nothing like anything. It runs when it could walk, deflates when it could climax and chooses only to swing for the fences when it could…just not. It is as off-kilter as it gets, and while that is not necessarily the best thing, the (good) thing about Das’ assured outing is that it doesn’t care.

Such irreverence leaks into everything. First, the broader strokes: a smashing Aamir Khan cameo, a blithe Sumukhi Suresh cameo, a bizarre fairness cream subplot, an equally absurd main plot of a London-returned spy entrusted with rescuing a white dermatologist kidnapped by goons in Goa, a protagonist speaking in Hindi filled with mispronunciation and malapropism (he pronounces “paas” as “puss” among other things) and running gags (like a random white man appearing on screen whenever Tom mispronounces “tum” as “Tom”; an old waiter who takes forever to bring order to the table) that fall into place after repeated recurrence.

Did you know? Vir Das specially wrote Imran Khan's character after roping Aamir Khan in Happy Patel

Irrespective of how one looks at it, these are plucky swerves that might not always add up but are rewarding enough to keep up. Then, there are the smaller details: a spy with queer white parents (Happy, played by Das, calls them “baaps”) and a penchant for cooking, a dancer who really cannot dance (Mithila Palkar), daughter of a slain mafia who kills by feeding cutlets (Mona Singh, as always, is a delight), an Indian man as the subject of the skin whitening experiment who only gets whiter (one of the many gender subversions in Happy Patel employs, like the man doing an “item song” for the girl he loves or him “earning” her consent through several slaps)

Much of the film (written by Amogh Ranadive and Das) feels too inventive to be streamlined. It is also playful enough to appear as if it were made on the go, like several comic sets stitched together. Take for instance, how a group of thugs start singing as a form of punishment, one that eventually breaks Happy, or how every time he cooks, the entirety of his dish occupies the frame, or the fact that Sharib Hashmi plays Geet, owner of a hotel in Goa, and his character looks Laal Singh Chaddha, and Palkar is called Rupa – both names of characters from Aamir Khan’s films which tanked.

As much as Happy Patel resists meanings, it becomes clear that at its heart, the film is a celebration of failure. Happy Patel is a failed spy. He has none of the goods to be a secret agent like his father. He has little idea about the lay of the land (all his training about India is derived from Hindi films), his Hindi is broken, he faints at the sight of blood, and the only time he really gets angry is when his finger, which he used to taste his dishes, is chopped off. And despite everything, he remains clueless that his mission in India is actually an elaborate ploy where he stands to lose. While this makes for comic gold (and much of it lands), the real merit of a film lies deeper.

It is imperative to acknowledge that Happy Patel comes at a time when Hindi cinema is clogged with spy dramas, headlined by a specific kind of hypermasculine spies who are suave to conflict and immune to pitfalls. Das putting a film like this together against such a setting is not just a wild swing but an informed one.

Despite the neckbreaking chaos of the narrative, Happy Patel remains committed to one thing: upending the stereotypes associated with spy films. The unseriousness is both the intent and the language, the message and the messenger. It is a difficult feat, and Das is the right man to take it home. His British-accented Hindi is outlandish and holds the fort when everything around cracks a little. His interstitial position, an insider with an outsider perspective, enables him to reiterate that there are other, more fun ways of doing the job. That a cooking competition, and not necessarily a hand-to-hand fight, can be a deciding match, and when pushed against the wall, Shah Rukh Khan’s hook steps from 'Chaiyya Chaiyya' (the iconic song from Dil Se) can save the day. Violence is never the answer and, as Happy Patel insists, sometimes it is not even the question.