To state it straight, Happy Patel: Khatarnaak Jasoos won’t work for viewers who are looking for a conventional payoff. Look at the title itself, one word that your heart might spark, “that’s very weird.” Well, that’s the play! And for those willing to accept its internal rules, the film will showcase something rarely grand rather than a polished comedy sketch. It is confidence in its own weirdness. By the end of the film, you will find yourself laughing as you realise that everything is coherent, just not in the way you want it to be.
It’s not the chaos for chaos’ sake. We find it peculiarly refreshing. Here, cause and effect exist, but they arrive obliquely. Things don’t happen because they should; they happen because the film believes they might as well. And it demands you to sit on its wavelength. Once you sit on its wavelength, it will start to make its coherence in its own mischievous way, till then, the film might just come as a no-brainer.
Scenes here don’t always “build” toward something. At every turn, a tense moment dissolves into something slapstick. The action sequences feel like the universe is tripping over itself as if it were meant to be. Happy Patel is a walking misunderstanding and a contradiction. Vir Das anchors the narrative with a complete understanding of the assignment.
Vir Das doesn’t try to elevate the crux into cleverness; instead, he leans into the silliness of it with calculated conviction. Das’ commitment becomes the film’s backbone. When the world around him turns uncontrollably unhinged, his earnest foolishness oddly becomes the most stable thing on screen, and that is what makes it the ideal comic relief you were yearning for.
And as you watch the film, you learn how to ask questions and then again answer them. “Why is this happening?” Well, of course, “this is happening.” For absurdism in today’s world becomes your coping mechanism—and you laugh at everything, anyway.
The film knows it will only amuse a specific kind of viewer who likes to be silly in this not-so-safe world—the one willing to laugh at chaos without demanding order. Everything doesn’t need a structure, right?
IWMBuzz rates it 4/5 stars.
