I heard (read) a lot of good things about Sekar Kammula’s latest flick “Happy Days”, but viewing the movie is a better experience than what all of them described. I watched the movie last weekend with my family and visiting Sunitha and her kids. Before watching the movie, I thought that the movie may appeal to young, college going students. But after watching the movie, I realized I was wrong. I enjoyed the movie as much as my kids (13 and 8 ) and my niece (7).
In retrospect, I could see many reasons for the success of the movie. And many ways in which the film stands out when compared to the contemporary Telugu movies.
- Cast: This movie is a good example that you can make a successful movie if you have a good script and good actors. There is no need for big names in the cast to pull the movie.
- Relevance: The movie touches all the relevant feelings around (watch out that word “around”) the student community in the society today. Right from freshers, ragging, ambitions, goals, parents, hard work, disabilities, poverty, helping juniors, job interviews, what not. Most of them are subtly woven into the story and all of them look very natural and believable.
- Script: None of the characters get a big entrance and the script takes its own time to introduce all the lead players. But the viewers are fully engaged in that process, because the script focuses on the salient characteristics of the individuals rather than situations and comedy alone. I got a similar feeling when I watched Chak De India.
- Positiveness: The movie is full of positive energy and positive characters. Even the mother of the disabled student explores the positives and tries to establish a win-win scenario rather than portraying her son as a person that requires lot of support. Closer to the end of the movie, even the rudest of the senior batch exposes his positive outlook. The romance between the characters also takes a simple and ethical route than displaying stupidity all the way.
- Simplicity: The movie is made up of simple things that work (like Unix operating system 🙂 ). Things like characters, locations, songs, costumes, scenes and so on. No expensive foreign locations, no grandeur sets, no heavy scenes etc. Simple.
Given all these right ingredients, there are lot of people who can relate their present, past or future with scenes in the movie, hence they feel like being part of the story. That is the critical factor behind the success of the movie.
BTW, I bought the audio album of the movie right after watching the movie. All the four kids at home can now sing to the tunes of these songs. Because they play these repeatedly in the car and on the computer.
very true… 🙂 I watched it very recently…we connect a lot with the movie…thats what it makes it so special…
and the casting…there was absolutely no flaws in thier acting…they were so much into the characters…and all being freshers…hats off to shekhar’s workshop…:)
really enjoyed watching it…all my friends here in k’taka also loved the movie a lot inspite of not following the lang…
grt work!!! cheers:)
This movie is awesome.. I am not able to be normal even after 10 days.. I really enjoyed watching this movie and I felt good about myself while watching…
I dont know telugu, but still I loved this movie more than any other movie i watched in my language…
this movie is awesome. i second shun’s comment. i saw the movie just 10 days ago as telugu is not my language. i have not been able to recover either. like they say, sekhar kammula has been born to weave magic spells through his films. this is truly his calling.
hello,last of 4 to 5 months i came to learn about the film Happy days from my friends,and atlast i got a to watch it last sunday.I dont know telugu i am a bengali but still i cannot believe it to myself that within 2 days i watched it for 3 times and i listened the songs 10times a day.it seems that i have became addicted to the film.