Watching the first “Housefull” film six years ago, it would have been difficult to imagine a movie with so much inanity could spawn not one, but two sequels and be called a film franchise. Thanks to the vagaries of the Indian film market and the mystery that is the Bollywood movie watcher, we are faced with “Housefull 3“, a film that should never have been made.
housefull1Emboldened by the success of the earlier films, director duo Farhad–Sajid approach this one with the finesse of an elephant on a rampage. To talk about offensive jokes and terrible acting would be stating the obvious. This film has nothing new to say – it just regurgitates old material in the hope that audiences have not evolved or have a short-term memory and will laugh at the jokes again.
Just like the first two films, a sprawling mansion in London is the setting for the comedy. Batuk Patel (Boman Irani) is a rich Indian businessman with three beautiful daughters — Ganga, Jamuna and Saraswati — who can never be married because of a family curse. Determined to get rid of the very thought of marriage from his daughters’ minds, Patel consults his friend Aakhri Pasta (Chunky Pandey, in a recurring role), who suggests, very casually, that Patel convince his daughters to have hysterectomies, because no one would want to get married to a woman who cannot reproduce. (Yes, this is supposed to be funny).
housefull2Thankfully, this idea is dismissed, and instead, Pasta disguises himself as an astrologer and tells the three girls that Patel will die of a heart attack if their boyfriends set foot on the property, or spot their father or call out to him. In what is only the beginning of hare-brained schemes in this film, the three girls convince their boyfriends to pretend to be crippled, blind and mute respectively.
So Sandy (Akshay Kumar) rolls in on a motorized wheel chair (thus never stepping into the house), Teddy (Riteish Deshmukh) pretends to be blind (thus never seeing Patel), and Bunty (Abhishek Bachchan) pretends he cannot speak, thus “saving” Patel’s life.
The humour in the film is scraping the bottom of the barrel. “Naukri neeche,” the three leading ladies screech at their father in one scene. They apparently mean “calm down” (since kaam or naukri is Hindi for work/job, and neeche is down). Race, colour, the differently abled — “Housefull 3″ spares no one, and if you are not offended by the end, you are likely to be bored out of your mind because it isn’t even funny.
The post “Housefull 3“, a film that should never have been made appeared first on News India Times.