Hasee Toh Phasee

Watching films at home has its own peril. Sometimes you tend to fast-forward a film, trying to get a grip, trying to figure out what’s happening, and you end up not liking the film, simply because you did not see the film in the sequence it was intended.

This exactly what happened during my first viewing of Hasee To Phasee. I found the film disjointed. I told this to a friend. He was beside himself. This is his favourite film of the year, so far. He has seen the film three times, in theatre. So, just to make him happy, I saw the film again, and this time I really liked it.

I am still not crazy about it, or about Parineeti Chopra, whom my friend likes so much. I thought her ‘drug-addicted’ sequences were a tad over-acted. I should know.

Otherwise, the film was a breeze, despite the fact that it centres on a wedding, the background for almost all Bollywood movies these days.

What I liked most was how the movie treats its minor characters, and there were so many of them (including a foreign friend, who even doesn’t get to dance, or did he? We do not really know who he was.). They do not have much screen time, but, somehow, like clockwork, the screenwriters find time to give each of them a fleeing second of glory. Including Tinu Anand. It’s fun.

And, after a long time, here is a film set in Bombay, not Delhi, or Europe.