Happy New Year to stretch over 3 hours! Test of patience or a jubilant ride?

-- At a time, when the length of a movie exceeding a little over 130 minutes is considered a sin, Farah Khan’s Happy New Year is all set to make a brave move by having a runtime of 188 minutes. The final cut sent for the censor certification has a duration of 3 hours and 8 minutes making it one of the longest movies of the year. Whether it will hamper the general response will only depend on the quality of the movie.

Happy New Year is a film very huge on canvas. The film has expensive large sets, dance shows, action scenes, larger than life sequences and an ensemble star cast, hence the length of the film could not be straight away condemned. It is only to be taken into consideration that the cinematic norms, style, audience’s taste, sensibilities and parameters have changed which no longer support the length as long as 3 hours. However, we don’t have to dig out too far in the past to pick an example of a film with long length yet earning success. India’s highest ever grosser ‘Dhoom 3’ was almost 3 hours long but received a very encouraging public response. The film not only broke all box records in India but also went ahead as the highest earner in overseas too.

The length of the film doesn’t rely on anything but the screenplay. If anything can justify the long runtime of the film is its story and the demand to elongate the length to fit in all requirements. Having a longer length is most importantly not considered a very strong point since it affects the trade directly. Longer the length, lesser the shows, lesser the shows, lower the collections. Hence, the business minds in any production do not advise filmmakers to go beyond two hours. All things said and done, we cannot question the celluloid reading of someone like SRK and team. As they say, no film is too long as long as it serves ‘entertainment’.