The Houseful franchise pleads
consistently with you to leave your analytical skill sets and have a laugh at
the guffaws galore. They have done it before and they stick to the repute (?).
Not a moment passes without something ridiculous happening, not a moment when
the sane would not like to scream halt and many a moment when if you have your
laughter nerves in indulgent mode that you don’t join the audience lap it all
up.
The story line is non-complicated: Six years before it all begins we have three
goons caught by the London police for an amateur jewellery heist. Now to the
beginning: we have this stinkingly rich Indian businessman Batook Patel (Boman
Irani – who simply cannot come to terms with the role) and his three daughters
Gracy (Jacqueline), Jenny (Lisa Hayden) and Sarah (Nargis). Papa is against the
three getting married and the ruse is that everyone in the family had an
unhappy marriage. He also gets a hamming Aakhri Pasta (Chunkey Pandey) to tell
the gals that if their respective suitors set foot, spoke the first word or set
his eyes on the prospective pa-in –law he would die. The bimbette group however
are in love and their choices and transparently suspect. Gracy falls for a
football aspirant Sanday alias Sundi (Akshay) who apart from sharing the looser
status with the other suitors has the additional qualification of being a split
personality and this triggers off whenever someone utters the expression
Indian. Jenny is in love with Teddy (Ritesh) who is a guy who enters a car race
without enough gas in the car!! Sarah is in love with Bunty (Abhishek) who is a
rock rapper who can never get through a competition and returns to sing songs
on Maa bhen.
Now that you are introduced to an assembly of people who have left their brains
behind, the same is expected of you. So we have the three guys entering the
businessman’s palace as a lame, a blind and a dumb guy to overcome the fatal
predictions of the hotelier turned predictor. Now the girls and the gals are
having all the fun they can in Lovely England. In the meanwhile you are
squirming in your seat or laughing aloud depending upon where you come from.
At half time we have the grand entry of Urga Nagri (Jackie Shroff) a local Don
who is arrested by the Mumbai police in the process of a major crackdown on the
mafia. Years later he walks out of jail and lands in London. We also have the
three goons who left us six years ago – Sameer Kolecha, Nikitin Dheer et al.
Now we have those comic finales where everyone is getting into trouble and
finding a way out. Laugh orders the film maker. Humour is this they say.
Actually there are times when you don’t mind a chuckle.
Taste some: Gambhir to Gautam bhi hai, hum bach nahi banarahein hain (we are
not kidding); Naukri neeche (calm down); Seb ki aankhen (apple of the eye)
Insaan ko damak chahiye Surat to Gujerat mein bhi hain, bandook ke bache (son
of a gun), use your hand for a cause not applause, lambhi ghadi ke pechey (long
time ago) ek baar ghadi ke upar (once upon a time)……
Despite this all, the film is engaging thanks largely to the performances by
the three guys. Akshay is in top form. Amazing how he can carry off such inane
stuff with credibility. There is Abhishek, poker faced giving Akshay rightful
company. So is Ritesh a grossly under rated actor sharing a fine sense of
timing in his comedy.
To sum up the film you may well borrow from it when a character says: Extra
ordinary. Too much of the extra and effectually ordinary. Housefull3 is Extra –
ordinary.
+ the three guys
– Poor humour
Rating 2.5
L. Ravichander.