Cry comedy, cry. Aiming to raise guffaws, a certified crackpot grinds his paws, jaws and claws. A fast car czar looks as if he has just parachuted to earth from Mars, not to omit a rap-singer who just can’t make it to the charts. And hark ye, an elderly gentleman emits a couple of farts in Dolby Surround. Here’s tastelessness unbound.
Sorry to report there’s just no improvement in this third edition of the Housefull franchise, initiated by director Sajid Khan, and now skewered some more by the takeover duo – writers-directors Sajid-Farhad. Be that as it may, in a way dear ol’ Sajid isn’t missed at all. LOL?
In fact, there isn’t a whit of change except for an overload of puns, on the lines of, “Hello, Martin, so you’re having a martini?” Or a mam’selle translating English into Hindi literally, “Ghadi ruk gayee thi” to convey “Time had stopped.” Worse, whenever there’s wordplay, the background music gongs, “Toy oy oy ting tong” or “Phooooey oooyeee”, just in case you missed the point. Meanwhile, that body gas-challenged gent’s nose keeps going out of joint.
Come on, Sajid-Farhad bhais and bade bhai producer Sajid Nadiadwala, Housefull 3 is clearly a case of two might have been company, but three is one helluva loud crowd. Moreover the mainstay of the plot, or whatever’s there of it, depends majorly on extracting titters out of physical disabilities.
Indeed, somewhere along the line, a guilty conscience seeps in: a confession in a church emphasises that such an insensitive tactic to coerce humour amounts to committing a sin. And what do you know? A priest pops up like a Jack-in-the-box to say, no worries, all’s quite cool kiddos. Really now. Huh, anything goes in the name of a dreadfully duh-comedy.
Over right away, then, to the done-to-boredom aerial shots of London. Next, get over the roughly-cut montage, to suffer the duffer antics of the wannabes: Football Sandy (Akshay Kumar), Rap-a-pap Bunty (Abhishek Bachchan) and fast wheeling Teddy (Riteish Deshmukh).
These adults, not exactly in the prime of youth, have somehow lassoed the affections of a trio of sisters (Jacqueline Fernandez, Nargis Fakhri, Lisa Haydon) who shake-rattle-‘n’-prattle at nightspots to the tune of Cyndi Lauper’s Girls Just Want To Have Fun. Right.
Nonsense-‘n’-fiddlesticks ahead. Weirdly the fun girls’ dad, Batook Patel, a Gujarati business tycoon (Boman Irani), strictly forbids his girls to tie the knot, be it with any Tom, Dick or Haribhai. Tucking into dhoklas besides speaking in an accent which could well be Greek or Latin, or both, however, he has to give in to his daughters’ pleas to give up their bachelorette status… Say, “Cheeeesey.”
Don’t beg for logic, puh-lease. The girls’ suitors, individually, pretend to be crippled, blind and mute, but end up confusing which one is impaired with which impairment. Help!
More: the screenplay goes turtle. Tycoon Batook could be a crook (maybe).So, pour out every cliché from the formula cookbook. Enter a don (Jackie Shroff) who tramples angrily on Batook’s mansion lawns. In addition, three jewel thieves (Fierce Expressions) arrive to be tricked into spending a steamy night with the household help, who incidentally are all black immigrants. If that isn’t racist, what is?
A Sufi song is used as a spoof, which could have been amusing, but isn’t. Also as in Fan, there seems to be an ongoing fixation about replicating Madame Tussauds’ waxworks. In-jokes are cracked clumsily, the most predictable ones being Abhishek’s allusions to Amitabh Bachchan. Neither can you comprehend why Chunky Pandey shows up to portray a faux astrologer-cum-Italian ‘naasta’ chef called Aakhri Pasta. A contrived snack for thought, that.
Technically nothing to write home or anywhere about, if this supposed rib-tickler has any redeeming factor, it’s a hyper-energetic dance piece set in a studio beer barn. As for the rest of the yarn, obviously it hasn’t been designed for any viewer who still craves for quantity.
Quite brazenly, there are specific scenes which the dialogue states categorically are NOT catered for the multiplex audience but for single screeners. Implication: single screen-goers like it crude, with maa-bahen double entendres. The ‘plex-goers don’t. How’s that for ghettoising?
Of the cast, the er..heroines…serve as the mandatory sexy quotients. Akshay Kumar is far too seasoned and mature to fit in as a bachelor boy. Not surprisingly, he’s depicted as a fervent nationalist who brings up the assumed British prejudice against Indians. Why this half-baked aside in a film of the feather light genre?
Lucklessly, Boman Irani hams outrageously. Only Riteish Deshmukh and Abhishek Bachchan, occasionally disclose a flair for sense of timing and cutesy goofishness.
For the rest of the way, Housefull 3 is about as funny as getting stuck in an elevator for 145 minutes. And paying good money for it too.
Image Source: youtube/erosentertainment