House-fool.

Grade: D

Housefull

Indian Release Date: 30/04/10
CBFC Classification:  U/A
Running Length: 2 Hours 35 Minutes

Cast: Akshay Kumar, Ritesh Deshmukh, Arjun Rampal, Lara Dutta, Deepika Padukone, Jiah Khan, Boman Irani, Randhir Kapoor, Chunky Pandey, Lilette Dubey
Director: Sajid Khan
Screenplay: Milap Zaveri, Sajid Khan,
Cinematography: Vikas Shivraman
Music: Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy

I walked in with lower than usual expectations for ‘Housefull’ & I have to say the movie did rise above those expectations; however the bad news is, barely. ‘Housefull’ is Sajid Khan’s homage to the great masala entertainers of Hindi cinema of the past like Manmohan Desai, Prakash Mehra & others; the opening proudly proclaims this but the movie is more than content to pick up plotlines, scenes & characters from the west. Movies like ‘The Heartbreak Kid’ (2007), ‘Meet The Parents’ (2000), ‘Night at the Museum’ (2006) & ‘The Cooler’ (2003) act as the primary plundering yards for the movie, thus making me wonder after his previous effort ‘Heyy Babyy’ (2007) does Sajid Khan have a single original bone in his body?

Aarush (Akshay Kumar) is bad-luck personified & anything he touches simply turns to dust. He leaves behind his job as a “cooler” (a person hired by casinos to turn someone’s luck from good to bad) at a Casino in Macau to spend some time with his friend Bob (Ritesh Dehmukh) in London. Bob along with his wife Hetal (Lara Dutta), works in a Casino run by Kishore Samtani (Randhir Kapoor) who’s been looking for a simple boy seeped in Indian culture to get his daughter Devika (Jiah Khan) married off to. Soon enough Aarush & Devika are married off & head to a coastal resort in Italy for their Honeymoon, where Aarush discovers Devika’s true intentions for the marriage. He blames his luck yet again & attempts suicide by drowning, when he’s saved by Sandy (Deepika Padukone), whom he takes an instant liking to. Due to misinformation in regards to his marital status, given by the resort’s owner ‘Aakhiri Pasta’ (Chunky Pandey), Sandy feels sympathetic towards Aarush & starts spending time with him, only to fall in love heads over heels with him. But what will happen when Sandy learns of the truth? This synopsis barely covers the first half.

The remaining movie consists of more subplots involving, Hetal’s long estranged father Batuk Patel (Boman Irani) & Devika’s brother Krishna (Arjun Rampal) who’s a gruff military intelligence officer straight out of the Robert De Niro school of thought from ‘Meet The Parents’ (2000). Throw in the age-old comic tool of mistaken identities & the movie is set.

Sajid Khan constructs the entire film as a patchwork of sequences to include only these things,

Scene 1: Attempt a funny dialogue or conversation
Scene 2: Slapstick Comedy
Scene 3: Comedy of sexual nature preferably homosexual
Scene 4: Dramatic scene with sad background score & rivers of glycerin.
Scene 5: Song with “creative” lyrics & half-naked people doing suggestive moves.
Scene 6: Go back to Scene 1 & follow till Scene 5 then rinse & repeat for two & half hours.

The first half was so rife with lame jokes that it was a struggle for me to stay awake. Post interval however the movie had a few (exactly two, I think) decent jokes at Boman Irani’s expense but didn’t improve by much. Homophobic humor & political incorrectness runs riot in the second half & trust me you have seen those jokes a million times before & the less said about the “gaseous” climax which will surely make you nauseous, the better. The first half has the immensely irritating Chunky Pandey copying Carlos Mencia’s Uncle Tito character right down to the “I’m joking / kidding” part. Scenes like the electrocution via the vacuum cleaner that makes Ritesh & Akshay dance, Akshay’s monkey-slapping bit, the tiger on the sofa, Ritesh – Akshay - Boman playing slap-go-around, etc are so ridiculously unoriginal. Plus how is that nearly every Bollywood comedy in the past two years seems to be flogging the same device of mistaken identities, be it ‘De Dana Dan’, ‘Do Knot Disturb’, ‘All the Best’, ‘Golmaal Returns’ or ‘One Two Thee’. They too must be paying their respects to the great filmmakers of the past I guess.

Ok I get it, that Sajid Khan wants this movie to be a homage to the masala entertainers but he plays it so straight without any tongue in cheek reference that his claim seems nothing more than a farce, maybe even an excuse for laziness & inept writing. Yes the over-the-top shenanigans are present but they are not even close to being original nor do they have the serious zaniness (almost bordering on & often crossing over into unintentional parody) which was a trademark of Prakash Mehra or Manmohan Desai.

The central plot even though setup initially is rarely followed up on. Everything is just thrown together to stick around various jokes in such a way that the plot feels like the padding for the jokes. The uneven pacing & overlong running length don’t help matter either. The songs are best forgettable though curiously there was a very raunchy song about things to do on a wedding night. Keeping in mind the number of teeny-toddlers watching the movie in the theater, I wonder if the parents were comfortable. The much hyped ‘Apne to Jayse Tayse’ remix from ‘Lawaris’ (1981) sounds & looks like just any other disco-themed Bollywood song.

Thankfully Akshay Kumar drops his over-confident womanizing avatar for this movie & is tolerable as an idiotic simpleton. Lara Dutta screams her lungs out at every opportunity she gets while Ritesh Deshmukh follows his usual shtick which he has in nearly every role so far. Deepika Padukone & Jiah Khan still need to learn acting goes beyond two expressions & a bikini. Arjun Rampal does what he does best; scowl. The only two real saving graces were Boman Irani & Randhir Kapoor, who has a breezy booze-guzzling cameo.

Like they say, one man’s meat is another man’s poison, so like how ‘Housefull’ did not do the trick for me; it might make someone else roar with laughter. But if poison is all you have been having your entire life, how would you ever know the taste of meat?

Final Verdict: If low-brow slapstick gags, juvenile humor & recycled jokes crack you up you are in for a treat with ‘Housefull’.

Grade: D

- Reviewed by Danish Bagdadi

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