(3 stars) 

(Bottom line: kickass Bollywood cliché) 

Happy Ending is like your morning cup of tea or coffee. You have the same Taj or Nescafe brand every day, with the same amount of water, heated to a certain degree. You even sit in the same corner and sip from the same mug too. Yet it is refreshing and brings you joy.

 A rom-com is no different. Boy meets girl. Boy chases girl. Boy kisses girl. Boy fights with girl. Boy chases girl to the airport. Get the lead hero to play the same role he has played so many times that by now he takes to it, like a Nawab to his land. Take all this sameness and churn in a semi spoof on Hindi films. That’s enough to make Happy Ending a happy unabashed film, all the way.

 Make that double happy. There is a rom-com within a rom-com. There is Saif and there is Govinda. This casting coup is by itself like a double decker ice cream; delightful and sweet. Here’s the best part. There is a Saif you have always seen and there is a Saif you have never seen. The latter is the cherry on the ice-cream (if there is such a dish). 

All the happiness pouring out from the film can be happily attributed to the team behind their last film, Go Goa Gone: writers (Raj, DK, Sita Menon) and directors (Raj Nidimoru and Krishna D.K, they are also twosome). The dialogues  (Hussain Dalal) range from naughty (includes the word ‘penis’) to funny. The story, as Govinda’s character, demands in the film, is nothing different.. “ladka ladki ko milne de….hat ke kuch nahin hai”.

 The ‘hat ke’ part, lie in the easy, breezy treatment and the female characters. These include a warm ex girlfriend (a mother of triplets never looked as endearing-Preity Zinta), a clingy and blindly optimistic ex girlfriend  (Kalki Koechlin at her best) who doesn’t know she is an ex and a girlfriend (Ileana D’ Cruz, charming) who has the same flaw as the hero.

Yudi (Saif Ali Khan)is an out of work novelist. His sole occupation is to woo one girl after another while he sits on unfinished manuscripts. He is commitment phobic and runs every time a girl utters the most dreaded three words in romance. Life gets worse when his publisher signs on a new writer, Aanchal (Ileana). She happens to be a fraud who tells romantic tales without an ounce of personal belief.

 Yudi’s floundering writing career, has just one savior: a has been hero, Armaan  (Govinda). Armaan wants a “mixed writer”-someone who will write a “kickass” film; “Bollywood story in Hollywood style”. Yudi has no choice, but to turn to his keyboard and some inspiration from his rival, Aanchal . Not to mention, some interesting self talk from a fatter, long bearded alter ego, Yogi. These are like any other scenes written before, except that Saif’s look (stylist gets a brownie point) and performance, beats every cliché hollow, and is one of his best on screen.

Govinda talks in his usual tapori style, is more winsome in his dialogue delivery than ever and goes around chucking his glares every time he ends a conversation. His six pack abs too makes an appearance in the best way possible; a perfect good humoured stunt that pokes fun at Bollywood heroes.

Govinda’s single expression towards the end , during a narration, when he sits up deeply interested, is reason enough to spend 300 bucks on Happy Ending.

 So is his dialogue, “teen sau rupaye mein logon ko jeena mat seekhao.” Now that’s kickass.

(The writer tries to make peace with her own filmmaking nightmares, of being a scriptwriter, actor and assisting film icons by moonlighting as a film journalist.http://gayatrigauri.blogspot.in)