I am a Tamilian, not a very sentimental type. By, no means a cine buff. You will perhaps never catch talking a nostalgic walk in the memory lane. Not that I liked my college much, for me to be tempted to do that ever. Yes! I met a lot of adorable people there, whom I still adore. Nonetheless, I can never look back at my college days without the bitterness of how much better it could have been.
The folks in my college weren’t exactly what one would call, “birds of the same feather”. Most often I felt like a crow amidst a stock of swans or the vice-versa, doesn’t matter either way. Felt good neither way. Thankfully, I was not alone. A handful of others felt as much out of place as I did. Promptly, we sniffed each other out and eventually become very close pals.
To quote Derdiot here, “No amount of unity can be as strong as the hatred towards a common enemy”. The common enemy being the rest of the stock and their attitudes. So from day one, bitching became an inevitable pass-time (was more of an occupation then!). The long and short of it, no looking back at college days on a pleasant day cause you don’t wanna ruin it!! In close touch with college friends, but constantly deluding ourselves about the background of the friendship, “the college”.
I m not writing to take the usual college bitching to a more elevated stance and post it in the web, nor am I writing a tribute to my dear college friends (Not for Christ’s sake !Never!!). It’s a mere film review! “Happy Days”, a movie that I would recommend my friends and the ‘rest of the stock’ to watch. It’s a movie any engineering college student can associate to, frame by frame. I have watched it twice already and might do so another couple of times, for the ‘mere joy of taking a walk down the memory lane!’ It’s unbelievable how the director has managed to capture possibly every worthy minute of the 4 years of college life in a two hours and forty minutes movie. A neat collections of the joyous and emotionally moments (sans melodrama), packaged into a nice simple movie. A nice simple movie one can watch right after a hard day’s work, during summer holidays, straight out of bed, with cousins on a lazy Sundays, or just whenever, for after all, ain’t it refreshing to feel young and wrinkleless as in college days. Every character, every moment, every incident in the movie can be directly mapped to one in our colleges. Tough seniors, hapless freshmen, the new ‘langoni- weairng’ damsel causing stirs in the college, senior gals getting irritated with her charm while the guys shamelessly go gaga under the bright sun, the fat 4th year guy, the eternal ‘peace-makers’ amidst seniors, the hot-chick whose seniority doesn’t stop one from getting crazy over her, the heart broken guy who fails to win the heart of whom he likes to believe to be, ‘the perfect woman of his life’, the girl with short hair amidst the freshers, the mirthful topper who tops rather effortlessly while in the same group is a person who slogs endlessly to only stand as a mere number two, the scared timid chap from a rural background, shaping up just in time for the campus inteviews, the tough professor, the pretty English professor, the overtly mature principal, the parents and the siblings of the main characters, the list is endless. I am tempted to go on with a similar long list for the moments and the incidents in the movie that completely relates to one’s college days. But I am sure the director does a better job of it and hence I leave it to you to watch the movie. A few scenes might seem slightly silly to a few, but I didn’t have much of a problem with them and rather preferred it to the cliché comedy track which usually stands out like a sore thumb in most of the other movies.
The choice of characters in the movie is a job done to perfection. All the actors have done a commendable job which makes it unfair to mention jus a few. My impression on Thamanna, the heroine has changed after this movie. The triple bleached fair woman has been captured well and looks very pretty in a lot many scenes. The costumes and the minimalistic make-up blend well with the movie. The gradual change in the style of dressing of ‘Shraaz’ is intelligent while I would have preferred Thamanna to be wearing an ethnic salwar during the campus interview, as in the case always in Indian engineering colleges. The music must get a special applause. Joyous, light-hearted back ground score and along with a few peppy and a few pleasing numbers. The choreography is particularly good in the ‘college campus’ song. The disco song could have been done a little differently, than the usual bored and beaten manner in which its shoot. Despite being Tamil, I could follow and totally appreciate the dialogues. The witty and eloquent dialogues add a much devoured flavour to the movie, ‘humor’. A mild American accent in the dialogue delivery could have been avoided. A friend of mine told me that the lyrics are good too, but my sparing knowledge of Telugu was a hampering factor. Thanks to the sensibility of the director, there are no stunt scenes for me to talk about. Cinematography is beyond my ken, but considering credits of the rest of the movie, I won’t be wrong to just blindly applaud it, “Three cheers!!”
The director, Shekar Kammula, doesn’t deserve a mere separate paragraph but that all what I can offer. I understand that he is an engineering graduate, but accordingly to me he is film student who thankfully studied engineering. None, other than a good film maker could have captured the life of an engineering student’s aswel. I only hope he keeps the good work going. This movie gives me a pleasant way of recollecting my college days, and for once, recollecting the ‘rest of the stock’ amuses me rather than irritating me. To me, Shekar Kammula is the hero of the movie!
The producers are “smart-jacks”, I bet they know where to put their bugs on. If I had the money, I would ring Shekar Kammula right away!! Surprise! Surpise!! The producer and the director of the movie is one and the same.