Happy (2006 film)

Happy
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	A. Karunakaran
Screenplay by	A. Karunakaran Kona Venkat (dialogues)
Story by	Radha Mohan
Produced by	Allu Aravind
Starring	Allu Arjun Genelia D'Souza
Cinematography	R. D. Rajasekhar
Edited by	Anthony
Music by	Yuvan Shankar Raja
Production company	Geetha Arts
Distributed by	UTV Motion Pictures
Release date	27 January 2006 (2006-01-27)
Running time	152 minutes
Country	India
Language	Telugu
Box office	₹9 Crore (Distributors’ Share)

Happy is a 2006 Indian Telugu-language romantic comedy film directed by A. Karunakaran and produced by Allu Aravind under his production Geetha Arts banner. The film stars Allu Arjun and Genelia D'Souza in the lead roles, while Manoj Bajpayee, Deepak Shirke, Brahmanandam, Kishore and Tanikella Bharani appear in supporting roles. The music was scored by Yuvan Shankar Raja, while the cinematography and editing were handled by R. D. Rajasekhar and Anthony.

The film is an official remake of the 2004 Tamil film Azhagiya Theeye with Radha Mohan providing the story while Karunakaran wrote the screenplay with Kona Venkat penning the dialogues.^[1]

Happy was released on 27 January 2006 and became a moderate success at the box office. Later the film was dubbed and released in Malayalam as Happy Be Happy, and it was a blockbuster in Kerala running successfully over than 175 days.

Madhumathi "Madhu" is the daughter of MLA Suryanarayana, who is a martinet at home with his attachment to power. Surya believes that his daughter's behavior would influence his caste politics, where he tries to keep her from continuing her MBBS as she goes to college and moves with friends of different mentalities. However, Madhu comes to her third year of medicine by maintaining her dignity, focusing completely on studies and not being involved in relationships and love affairs.

Madhu goes for a medical camp with her classmates to Araku Valley, where she meets Bunny Bhasker in the woods. Madhu's initial encounter with Bunny is funny and playful. Bunny comes to Hyderabad and joins in a pizza shop as a delivery boy and continues his MBA by attending evening classes. In an incident, Surya assumes that Madhu is dating Bunny, where he decides to get her married to DCP Arvind. Madhu is more attached to her studies than marriage, where she goes to Bunny and blames him for her marriage. Learning this, Bunny plans to stop the marriage and meets Arvind, where he lies to Arvind and convinces him that he is in love with Madhu. Arvind believes the latter and cancels the wedding, thus angering Surya.

Later, Surya plans to get her married to his friend's son Subba Rao, where he visits DCP Arvind and gives him the marriage invitation. Shocked, Aravind meets Bunny and gets him married to Madhu in a registrar's office, where he also gives his new flat for the couple. Madhu becomes estranged from her family and ends up living with Bunny, who Bunny ends up living with Madhu as he lost his job. Throughout their times together, mishaps and comedic events happen, where Bunny ends up falling for Madhu. Being separated from her family, Madhu has no way of paying for fees. One day, Madhu expresses this to Bunny, who gets into the film industry as an action choreographer and performs dangerous stunts in order to pay her semester fees.

Madhu scores lowest marks in a subject and gets negative feedback from her professor. To focus on her studies, Madhu scorns Bunny and wants him to be out of the house. Madhu focuses on her studies and achieves her MBBS degree with honors. On the day of her graduation, Madhu admits to her friend that she is indeed in love with Bunny, where her friend reveals about Bunny performing dangerous stunts for her college fees. Madhu's friend reveals that Bunny had told her not to reveal this to Madhu and had told her that he is going back to his home in Vishakhapatnam. With regret, Madhu tries to reconcile with Bunny and goes to meet him at the railway station.

On the way there, Madhu gets arrested under prostitution charges by Surya's nemesis ACP Ratnam as she unknowingly gave a lift to a sex worker. Surya storms into the police station and slaps Ratnam for arresting Madhu, but Surya also gets arrested. Madhu manages to contact Bunny with a cell phone provided by one of the inmates, where Bunny arrives to the station. Bunny also had an incident with Ratnam as he once berated him in public for smoking in a gas station. Bunny becomes enraged and has a long and bloody fight with Ratnam and the police until Aravind intervenes and stops the fight. Aravind asks Bunny and Madhu to leave and tells that he will take care of everything. Bunny and Madhu finally reunite with each other.

Songs released on 30 December 2005, was a major highlight and main strength of the film.^[2] It features six tracks with 'Sirivennela' Seetharama Sastry, Chandrabose, Kulasekhar, Viswa, Pothula Ravi Kiran, Ananta Sriram having each penned lyrics for one song. Music composer Yuvan Shankar Raja received critical acclaim for the music of Happy.

Lyrics for all the songs for the Malayalam dubbed version were penned by Siju Thuravoor.

Idlebrain.com wrote "Happy is a happy film watch for its songs and comedy."^[3] Indiaglitz wrote "The combination of enjoyable fun, good music and easy emotions make Happy work."^[4]

• Happy at IMDb