The Diplomat, Be Happy: Reviews This Week

The Diplomat Is A Competent Thriller With Avoidable Missteps

The Diplomat is the second consecutive film after Vedaa (2024) where John Abraham saves a girl. It’s not an unusual premise, but the film works because its heroism is less self-involved than usual. Ishita Sengupta reviews.

Dir: Shivam Nair

Cast: John Abraham, Sadia Khateeb, Jagjeet Sandhu, Revathy

Playing in: Theatres

On paper, Shivam Nair’s The Diplomat comes in the long line of rousing nationalist films that John Abraham has been headlining for a while. Based on a real-life story, it is about how an Indian government and a diplomat posted in Pakistan helped a girl back to the country. That Abraham is the protagonist only reinforces the prejudice. But it is also an exception given how the premise is entwined with nationalism mitigating dependence on embellishments. Real names of politicians are used and their contributions are highlighted without running the risk of exaggeration.

The Diplomat unfolds attuned to this but it also overcompensates for the muted patriotism that the story demands with slight excess. Written by Ritesh Shah (writer of the masterful I Want to Talk ), the film takes place in Pakistan where an Indian girl, Uzma Ahmeda (Sadia Khateeb), desperately enters the Indian embassy looking for help and gets the officials, mainly JP Singh (Abraham) involved.

She was brought to the country under false pretence by Tahir Ali (Jagjeet Sandhu). They had met in Malaysia, fell in love and, on being persuaded, she went to Pakistan for him. But when she reached, his promise was revealed to be a sham. Uzma was held in Buner, a volatile region, with the other women he had done the same with.

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Be Happy Is A Sappy Episode Of Reality Television

Be Happy claims to spotlight dance but does so dishonestly, ultimately playing like a promotional reel for several reality shows Remo D'Souza judges while reducing its serious themes to a footnote.

Dir: Remo D'Souza

Cast: Abhishek Bachchan, Inayat Verma, Nassar, Nora Fatehi

Streaming on: Prime Video

ABHISHEK BACHCHAN is in his father-era. He has played the doting father in the last couple of his films ( Ludo, Bob Biswas , I Want to Talk ). With his latest work Remo D'Souza’s Be Happy, he perpetuates the tradition but lands as the most inefficient father in a worryingly inefficient film that cares little about human beings and reserves all its sympathy, empathy and emotions for dance. The level of commitment to the form outgrows everything and everyone else, even when that includes a cancer-afflicted child.

It is not wholly surprising. Remo D'Souza, who started out as a choreographer, has built his career as a director on the back of films on dance ( F.A.L.T.U , ABCD: Any Body Can Dance, ABCD 2 ). This is an acceptable proposition but they were either mainly about dance or could accommodate the practice with ease. Be Happy (written by Tushar Hiranandani, Kanishka Deo Chirag Garg and D'Souza) plays out like two different films – one about dance and another about a widowed man learning to live again with his daughter. The filmmaker tries melding them with dance to possibly underline its transformative power but ends up crafting Be Happy (a puzzling title) as a long, sappy episode of reality television. Except in this case, the camera followed the contestant at her home.

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