What a tasty prospect for a film: Shah Rukh Khan, Deepika Padukone, Boman Irani, Sonu Sood, Abhishek Bachchan and Vivaan Shah.
This attempt could have easily fallen into the same trap - trading purely on the stars' names rather than an intrinsic entertainment value. However it manages to take what worked from the original and give it a great modern shine. The story is daft of course, but it moves forward with a sort of slick illogical cleverness that appears wonderfully clever but is, of course, highly unlikely! The story unfolds in an entertaining manner, the buildup is great with no dull moments as we meet the characters and find out the details of the job bit by bit.
The job itself is well handled. It is so slick that you don't mind that it couldn't possibly work in real life, but instead it just appears so clever! The romantic subplot I found to be a little redundant and I didn't think that Khan and Padukone had good chemistry - compared to Khan and Kajol in another great Karan Johar's film 'My Name is Khan' where the screen crackled! However it takes up little screen time and compliments the heist quite well. Farah, as a director, handles the film well and doesn't allow her direction to be slick without substance. Remember, Tees Maar Khan?
The movie runs for approximately 180 minutes but it is worth it to sit through those 180 minutes. The sequences shot in Dubai are wonderful. The picturesque locales of Dubai have been filmed with brilliance.
Music by Vishal-Shekhar is brilliant. Songs like Lovely, Indiawaale, Mawaa Laage have already created massive buzz on the music charts and in the movie those alongside others are a treat to watch.
Khan is fantastic in the lead - his strength is that he has great charisma which means he doesn't have to ham it up. Instead he does his stuff but allows others to try and shine while he is comfortable with a constant warm glow. Padukone does likewise - she doesn't try to hog the glory but hangs around being smooth for most of the time. This allows Khan and Padukone to be the two leads without taking away from the ensemble feel.
This is a film that will keep you fascinated the entire time you are watching. It does not conform to the conventional values of the genre that we have come to expect. The twists and turns guarantee that by the end you will be sitting there thinking 'that was really clever'. Perhaps it isn't quite what you would expect from such a star studded cast. But that is why it is so much better than the archetypal Bollywood blockbusters that we have come to expect.
This is no run of the mill film. It was not about money or self promotion. It was about having fun and enjoying the job. Happy New Year is not a film that will be forgotten seconds after you have seen it. It will live forever as the epitome of cool for years to come.