SMART AND SASSY

Happy Ending

STARR ING: Saif Ali Khan, Ileana D'Cruz, Govinda, Kalki Koechlin, Ranveer Shorey

DI RECTOR: Raj Nidimoru/Krishna D K.

0kay, so in how many ways do we get to seethe Modern Indian Bollywood Hero (MIBH) play the commitment-phobic Casanova? See that guy out there We've seen him many times before, and played by Saif Ali Khan many times

Somehow for all its sins of redundancy, Happy Ending still manages to keep the narrative in a ceaseless state of sparkle Saif is that kind of an actor. He brings a shuffling nervous energy to each frame He never does the same thing in exactly the same way twice This is what keeps him going as the king of the ram-com

Think Hum Tum Think Oil Chahta Hai

Think Cocktail Think Salaam Namaste

There are no big cr i ses in the script to sort out. As Saiftells Kareena Kapoor (trying hard to look involved) in the film's prologue, "There is no depth in me What you see is what you get"

Saif again plays the jerk with a roving eye with a goofy panache that is cartoonish in its directness He strips his hero of all vanity and lets hiin roam naked in the wilderness

His Yudi is a selfish, horny, unethical bastard And we don't see him make much of an effort to hide it.

For a large part of the narration, we see Saif's character move across acres of self-seeking pleasure -hood, revelling in a kind of masturbatory courtship where the other partner's feelings are ruthless decimated

There is this smartly-written sequence in a hotel room where Yudi and Aanchal - the one-book wonder and the pulpy authoress on the rise- share a platon ic bed that soon turns into an occasion fo r subtle mating games

Happy Ending is a film that strives to wear its aura of urbane cool by making the actors so familiar with the i r characters that the line dividing the performers and the performances seems redundant.

Shot in San Francisco and Los Angeles, the film is very good-lookin g. The three cinematographers Chase Bowman, Yaron Levy and Mahesh Limaye, shoot the characters against backdrops that would have served as postcards if the plot didn't invite the locales to be characte rs.

Kalki Koechlin as the blissfully devoted g i rl friend brings such a remarkable charm to her character's annoying devotion to her man that you wonder ifYudi wouldn't be doing the right thing in simply settling down with th is utterly and hopel essly devoted lovergirl.

But restless Yudi, whose only bestseller has been off the shelf for five years, has other plans He takes off on a road trip with the writer-on-therise

The mid-portions where the couple gets close while travelling together is almost inert in mood. Very little actual ly happens in the film And there lies the beauty of the beast called urban relationships.

A l ot ofthe drama that we see in our relationships comes from imagined inferences and illusory innuendos. This is where the co-directors bring i n Yudi's alter ego (Saif in a double role)

The look and the personality of the alter- ego seems inspired by music composer Pritam Maybe there is a subliminal message here: mediocre music and aim less relationships are equa ll y self-defeating.

Govi n da p lays a tacky Bo ll ywoo d superstar in pu r suit of a script that would take h i m from the single-screens to the multiplexes You cou l d say he aspires to be in the kind of film that Happy Ending aims to be.

Govinda and Saifplay against one another with gleefu l gusto. Co - directors Raj Nidimoru and Krishna D.K. (both make an appearance, one as cabbie, the other as a film director) keep the proceedings free of imposed drama At times, Happy Ending is a savagely wicked, sinfully irreverent, smart and sassy ram-com

At other times, it just doesn't move. And because the co-directors know how to hold our attention even when his protagonist is stricken by ennui, we can safely assume that some sharp writing skills are at work here even when there isn't much happeni ng on the surface

While Saif brings a variation to his stereotypi cal role, Ranveer Shorey as his best friend does the same with his habitual flai r for flirting with the familiar

The two actors get hand of the film's basic mood: same-same but different.

SUBHASH K. JHA