Happy Birthday To Me movie review: Comedy about a dead body at a birthday party is a mix of hits and misses

2.5/5

Happy Birthday To Me movie story: Flatmates Puneeth (Siddharth Maadhyamika) and the eternally ‘high’ Trippy (Siddu Moolimani) have a party to ring in the former’s birthday. Expecting more exciting company in the form of his friend Adithi (Chaithra J Achar), Puneeth kicks everyone else out. But then Adithi has an ‘accident’ and dies. To solve this dire situation he’s in, Puneeth gets Trippy back and the duo devise a plan to dispose the body, which is easier said than done, what with Puneeth’s girlfriend Seema (Rachana Rai), house owner Janardhan (Gopalkrishna Deshpande) and next-door neighbour Savitha (Archana Kottige) around.

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Happy Birthday To Me movie review: Debutant director Rakesh Kadri’s film’s plot about a dead body and the desperate attempt to get rid of it isn’t new by any means; the execution would be, he’d said. He’s kept it simple – single location, few characters and a narrative spanning only a few hours, with some situational humour along the way. He doesn’t take long to get to the point – Adithi (Chaitra) has died under mysterious circumstances in Puneeth’s (Siddhartha) company. She’d smoked up before ending up dead, which, Puneeth figures, makes Trippy (Siddu) just as complicit in her demise.

He isn’t, but Puneeth’s manipulative skills win here. And it’s not only Trippy that gets sucked into Puneeth’s machinations, but another pal, Krishna (Suhan Prasad), too, all because he returned to pick up the smartwatch he’d left behind the night before during their drunken debauchery. But try as they might, they can’t get Adithi’s body out of the flat. What will they do?

All is well with the film, about how Adithi ends up dead, even though Puneeth’s story changes a couple of times. It’s the final reveal about what actually transpired between the duo, involving a GoPro, that literally felt like a death blow and no matter the jokes that came thereafter, it was no longer laughing matter. This birthday present became a tad distasteful then.

As far as the performances go, well, Chaithra has precious little to do other than play dead. Siddarth Maadhyamika as Puneeth is not the most evocative, leaving Siddu Moolimani as Trippy to do the heavy-lifting in the comedy department.Rachana Rai and Archana Kottige have cameos, with the latter, thankfully, not denigrated to being the hot neighbour that everyone’s salivating over, even though she’s called Savitha Bhabhi.

Happy Birthday To Me is a comedy about a party and a dead body 

For the most part, Happy Birthday To Me is a breezy watch, offering the occasional chuckle too. But it doesn’t leave one entirely satisfied. Word of caution, don’t be fooled by the title. This is not a film for kids, there are expletives galore in the dialogues and scenes of recreational drug use.

Happy Birthday To Me movie verdict: Rakesh Kadri’s Happy Birthday To Me does not rely much on the methods to dispose a dead body, focusing instead on what happened, and how to keep the body out of sight of inquisitive visitors. The humour is centred on keeping up all the deception laid out about who the dead person is, why she was there, etc. It works to some extent, but is short of being a wholesome entertainer.