If you have a successful series to continue, aiming just for a quick initial in the weekend fooling the enthusiastic viewers, then all you need to do is, arrange for the collective dates of the entire lead cast, take them for a month or so to a foreign location and return back with a film to be released as the third part of the series with some heavy promotions and shouts in the trade claiming it to be laugh riot.
And you don’t need to worry about the script, as it can be anything revolving around a father, three couples, a villain and a Chunky Pandey as a must, written on the location itself, incorporating some silly digs on the English phrases and many supposedly funny Whats App messages disclosed in a collective sitting with the writers sipping some costly drinks (financed by the producer). In addition the 3-4 songs required to squeeze in at regular intervals can be easily briefed to the composers sitting back in Mumbai on phone, who can quickly send you the rough scratches to shoot within days having lyrics written by just anybody fitting in the meter, mocking the people who have no issues dancing on lines such as “Pyar Ki Maa Ki” and “Taang Utha Ke”.
So that is HOUSEFULL 3 and its possible story behind the making. A film that can easily be rated as marginally bearable, just because it’s not as awful as its closest contender HUMSHAKALS, that is now considered as a benchmark in the art of making appalling movies.
Opening with a poor English song used in the titles, the writer-director duo right away begin with their silly translations of famous English phrases that look okay in the start but soon turn into an irritating, repetitive feature within the next one hour. Full of all below average gags and ineffective comic sequences in its initial 40 minutes, the film actually begins serving the entertainment only when the heroes get to meet Boman, pretending to be the physically disabled lovers of his three beautiful daughters.
However as soon as the long (lazy) introductions and the ‘truth tests’ get over, it quickly turns into a typical masala movie with Jackie Shroff making an entry as an old time Mumbai Don disclosing a history of betrayal and everything leading towards a lesser enjoyable, misdirected mess in the second half (that even has a 1-2 minutes sequence in Gujarati, strangely without any subtitles).
In fact, taking over the reins from Sajid Khan, the only positive contribution Farhad-Sajid make here is, that they don’t go as bad as Sajid in his HUMSHAKALS. Still, what you get to see in their second venture is much boring, flat, offensive and racist too at times that ideally shouldn’t be the feature of a light hearted comedy made with an intention of entertaining a wide range of audience. Particularly the jokes on the disability, Indian as slaves and three black maids, certainly cannot be considered as something written in any good taste. May be that is the reason they purposefully added a confession sequence in the church too in order to counter the allegations coming for the same.
Apart from the two amazingly bizarre, shamelessly promoted songs mentioned above, the film also has a typical Punjabi dance number following the set routine and another partial Rap song too sounding like a tweeter troll (sung by Abhishek) which goes, “Teri Maa Bhen, Maa Bhen, Maa Bhen……………..”. Admittedly I don’t think any other Hindi film has touched such a low in the lyrics department ever in the history of Hindi Film Music.
Trying hard to make it enjoyable, HOUSEFUL 3 has an uneven background score that starts making an impact after the initial 45 minutes getting an appreciable support from the DOP. However at times, I found a particular phrase in its notes sounding like the music of ‘Satrangi Re’ from the cult film DIL SE.
In the performance department, there is only Akshay Kumar who is able to infuse the much needed life into this sluggish film with his split personality act in particular (that ironically also has an irritating chanting in the backdrop using the name ‘Sundi’). Otherwise it doesn’t have any great contribution coming from either Ritesh Deshmukh, Abhishek Bachchan, Boman Irani, Jackie Shroff or Chunky Pandey (with Abhishek, franklyremaining the weakest). The girls are just there as per the mandatory requirement quite close to three beautiful mannequins placed to attract the viewers at regular intervals and the same is the case with Nikitin Dheer, Sameer Kochhar and Arav Chowdhary as the three additional anti-heroes given nothing much to do.
In all, the humour in HOUSEFULL 3 most of the times falls flat with the only saving grace being Akshay Kumar. The film cannot be rated as an enjoyable venture anywhere even close to its predecessor HOUSEFULL 2, but it also isn’t as awful as Sajid’s HUMSHAKALS (if only that can be considered as a merit in comparative terms). So the chances are that die-hard fans of Akshay, might not find the film as bad as they themselves had expected looking at its poor promos.
Aur Main “Bachche Nahin Bana Raha Hun”……… which actually means “I am not kidding” as translated in the film that can be easily skipped this week for something much better.
However, ending on an introspective note, I would personally like to question Akshay Kumar for his actual vision behind such contradicting choice of films displayed in the recent years, wherein at one end he gives us worth praising high-in-spirits movies such as HOLIDAY, BABY, AIRLIFT and more setting a fine example, but on the other he has no issues in featuring in songs such as “Pyar Ki Maa Ki……” and “Taang Utha Ke” creating a huge moral confusion. Here would like to add, that we all love to see Akshay featuring in these mindless comedies too using his impeccable comic timing widely known to all. But dancing to such awfully degraded lyrics………….. really hurts a lot!
Rating : 1.5 – 0.5 = 1 / 5 (with 0.5 deducted for the highly absurd and horrible lyrics of its three tracks touching a new unexpected low in Hindi Film Music.)
