‘Be Happy’ review: Dads, daughters and dance

After playing the chronically ill father of a young girl in I Want to Talk, Abhishek Bachchan plays a different kind of dad in Be Happy. In this dance-drama, streaming on Amazon Prime, the actor plays a widower raising a daughter who has an unshakable passion and talent for dance.

Helmed by choreographer-director Remo D’Souza, Be Happy, written by D’Souza, Kanishka Singh Deo, Chirag Garg and Tushar Hirandanani, is built on the foundations of a father-daughter relationship and dance.

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Shiv and Dhara live in an old house in Ooty with Dhara’s maternal grandfather Nadar (Nassar). Shiv works in a bank and reports to his father-in-law. Dhara, who is obsessed with dance teacher Maggie (Nora Fatehi), doesn’t want to lose out on an opportunity to train with Maggie at her academy in Mumbai. But this is not a class that teaches you all kinds of dance simply for the joy of it. The end-game is getting a spot on a dance-based televised contest.

Given D’Souza’s experience and skills, the least one expected was visually and creatively inventive dance sequences. Be Happy falters in capturing the dedication and sacrifices required to make it to a national reality television, as well as on the choreographed pieces themselves. Dhara being a child more attracted to the spotlight than a committed danseuse weakens the film’s core. Even Fatehi’s dance moves don’t wow, her acting doesn’t either, and she shares more chemistry with her young students than with Bachchan.

The second pillar—family ties—is sturdier. While his character is hardly happy, as the devoted father, Bachchan holds up a tonally, emotionally and creatively inconsistent dance-drama. It helps that Bachchan’s Shiv Rastogi and Inayat Verma, who plays his precocious daughter Dhara, are easy with each other. They were previously seen as father and daughter in ‘Ludo’ (2020).

The film skates along gently, following the tropes, turning up the emotional manipulation along the way. Dhara is that kid who downloads a dating app on her father’s phone so he might get over his loneliness. Shiv is that father who will move mountains to actualize his daughter’s every desire. When things don’t go her way, the smart Dhara plays the dead mama (Harleen Sethi) card to guilt her father. Her grandfather is a happy accomplice. Dressed in a range of coord-sets, he’s the biggest baby in the family and Nassar doesn’t hold back on hamming up his performance. Johny Lever pops up in an irritating and dispensable track as a superstitious building security guard.

The script then amps up the emotional manipulation to a nauseatingly high level. The production that already looks sapped of colours, is now also drained of originality. The emotional metre of the film shifts as the character’s face the greatest challenge of their lives. The film would have you believe that supporting your child’s dreams is a parent’s primary responsibility, even if it means risking her life in an unsanitized space to put her in the spotlight. If the makers thought Shiv should earn father of the decade, in the face of crisis the character’s decisions are highly irresponsible and questionable.

The script gets something right in the father-daughter bond but doesn’t excavate the depth and complexities of single parenting, grief and trauma. In focusing on the drama, D’Souza takes his eye off his core competence—dance. Rather than focus on form, technique and skill, he simplistically celebrates the aspirational world of reality shows, of which he has been a part. 

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