Review: 'Housefull' is just awfull!

Film: Housefull
Director: Sajid Khan
Cast: Akshay Kumar, Riteish Deshmukh, Arjun Rampal, Lara Dutta, Deepika Padukone, Jiah Khan, Boman Irani and Randhir Kapoor
Rating: **

In the climax of Housefull, laughing gas is let free in a roomful of people in Buckingham Palace. There’s your entire principal cast and foreign junior artistes – including one playing Queen Elizabeth II who says “Jai Maharashtra” for some weird reason – and they all start laughing uncontrollably, even though they are angry or upset or just irritated with each other. As a viewer, you are angry, upset and irritated too. You are just not laughing uncontrollably. Or laughing at all actually.

When Housefull starts, you are hopeful. Aarush (Akshay Kumar) is introduced as a cooler – someone who gets bad luck to a casino, thus helping the owners make money – with a background song which goes, “He’s such a loser.” He’s your protagonist who stumbles over people, knocks off things by mistake and vacuum cleans a house of all its valuables, including a parrot called Prada. Ok, that’s not exactly the hopeful bit.

The hopeful bit, then, is that Kumar isn’t going overboard with his antics this time. His role doesn’t allow him to do so and that’s the only thing the script stays true to even as everything else falls apart. So you have gay jokes, Gujarati puns, wife-swapping and characters slapping each other – nothing you haven’t seen in a film before, unless you factor in a monkey who does some of the slapping this time.

Kumar’s recent filmography includes Chandni Chowk To China, Blue, De Dana Dana and Singh is Kinng. Then there’s Kambakkht Ishq, also made by the producer of this one, who was apparently so upset with the reviews KI received, that he decided not to keep a press show prior to Housefull’s release. Good move, I say. Or word would have been out yesterday itself. And what’s the word on this one?

Let’s just say Housefull is a fitting addition to Kumar’s above-mentioned gems. This one too has not-much-of-a-story to speak of, is high on gloss and locations and low on logic, has loud characters and senseless gags that don’t as much as make the corner of your mouth twitch – forget laughing – and songs that pop up when they shouldn’t.

The film’s posters, part of an obnoxiously hyperactive marketing campaign, said ‘The Heyy Baby Team Reloads’. Even though its hard to see how that’s an incentive, you actually realise while watching Housefull that actor-comedian Sajid Khan’s first attempt at direction was much more enjoyable than what he’s dished out this time.

The marketing campaign might just help actually; the audience is starved for a big-budget film, and with half-a-dozen stars thrown in and the fact that the film is the first to release after the IPL, high weekend numbers could be a possibility. But then what? There’s only that much distance full page ads announcing gross collections and record-breaking opening numbers can take a film.

What’s the film’s story? Well, if you must know, ‘unlucky’ Aarush’s wife runs away with her lover on the night of their marriage, he falls in love with a girl who is the sister of his ex-girlfriend and his best friend’s father-in-law mistakes him to be the husband of his daughter.

Confused? Well, Housefull tends to do that to you too. The intention is to make you laugh of course, which it manages at exactly 2-and-a-half places. Don’t ask which, because those moments don’t really stay with you. The only thing that does is ’80s singing sensation Shabbir Kumar going in the background, “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.”

Exactly what you tell yourself sitting in that dark cinema hall.