Cast: Akshay Kumar, Riteish Deshmukh, Bobby Deol, Kriti Sanon, Pooja Hegde, Kriti Kharbanda
Director: Farhad Samji
First, the Housefull franchise is tainted by the involvement of Sajid Khan, one of the Bollywood names accused in the Me-Too movement last year. He has directed the first two films and was signed on to direct the latest, the fourth one. He was later, in a sincere effort, replaced by Farhad Samji. Me Too or no Me Too, the Housefull films are hard not to dislike. They are funny only because the makers tell us they are supposed to be. They often turn out to be the biggest jokes. Well, I’ll admit. We are part of the joke too. These films have been huge box office successes. So the makers are laughing all the way to the bank and the joke is, also in part, on us.
Housefull 4 is particularly poor. It is further tainted by a lack of originality. The bare bones of the plot are straight out of SS Rajamouli’s Maghadheera. Harry (Akshay Kumar), Roy (Riteish Deshmukh) and Max (Bobby Deol) are Londoners who owe Big Bhai (Manoj Pahwa) — hint Big Ben, get it? — some money. How they lost that money is a Jenga tower of unfunny sequences painfully stacked over each other. But Harry also sees visions of a past set six hundred years ago in the kingdom of Sitamgarh.
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To get the money owed to Big Bhai, they try to get married into another rich desi London family. The women are Kriti (Kriti Sanon), Pooja (Pooja Hegde) and Neha (Kriti Kharbanda). They couldn’t get Neha Sharma to play another Neha, I guess. Lucky Kriti Kharbanda. The women have their medieval counterparts too — Madhu, Mala, and Meena. Every character has got its counterparts. Post-Baahubali, Bollywood wants a piece of everything Rajamouli has ever done. But Housefull 4 doesn’t even take comedy seriously. They’ve been led to believe (and I am afraid, rightly so) that we’ll laugh at just about anything — birds shitting on characters’ heads, homophobic and transphobic jokes, jokes followed by funny background music, tribal kingdoms depicted as black-faced savages and cannibals.
The end credits, in Jackie Chan film fashion, show a blooper reel, every bit funnier than all the so-called jokes in the film put together. The credits also have the biggest joke. This cinematic excretion credits four people for the screenplay.
The Housefull 4 review is a Silverscreen original article. It was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the film. Silverscreen.in and its writers do not have any commercial relationship with movies that are reviewed on the site.
Also read, our review of Bigil
Read, our review of Kaithi