New Happy escapes and finds a saviour in an introverted Indian Consulate worker named Khushwant (Punjabi singer Jassi Gill). Just like we supposedly can’t tell the difference between them, the Chinese can’t tell the difference between Penty and Sinha.
Some Hindi-speaking Chinese gangsters, who are out to kidnap Happy (Diana Penty) and her singer-husband Guddu (Ali Fazal) on their arrival, mistakenly abduct another Happy (Sonakshi Sinha), who is a horticulturist on her own personal mission. There’s a plot, but it’s only an excuse to derive humour out of language barriers and overcrowded frames. This one of course can’t help but be snarky about the Pakistan-China relationship – what with India, and Happy, caught in between – but unlike the first film, its politics exist out of context. It sets the same faces loose in a developed country that makes them feel even more insecure – and therefore louder, crasser and wilder – about their Indian-ness. Mudassar Aziz’s sequel to the 2016 sleeper hit, in addition to fatally stretching the mistaken-identity and comedy-of-errors template, lazily relies on the clichés of the ignorant Indian tourist syndrome. Or an Urdu-speaking villain perpetually surrounded by sherwani-clad and kebab-eating Chinese diplomats. Or an obese Muslim who thinks he is Chinese. When all else fails, throw in a gay stereotype. In which case 136 minutes of Indians singing old Hindi songs in Shanghai, screaming over one another, culturally appropriating a different language and proudly peddling their outdated racism (“Their faces are all the same” is repeated in 13 different scenes) can get more than a bit tedious. Unless the bar being in China is the joke. A Sardarji, Pakistani, Chinaman and Jimmy Sheirgill walk into a bar.
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