BackFilm review: Housefull 3
Jokes about the differently abled, racism, sexismall the staple elements of the Housefull series are back
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The film opens with three masked men attempting to rob a diamond exhibit. They’re caught, though we don’t know who they are. Six years later, in the present day, Batuk Patel (Boman Irani) is hosting a lavish party at his English country house, where we are introduced to his three attractive daughters, Ganga (Jacqueline Fernandez), Jamuna (Lisa Haydon) and Saraswati (Nargis Fakhri). We also learn that Patel does not want his daughters to get married because he thinks their family is cursed when it comes to matrimony.
Dutiful and conservative on the outside, the sisters are actually party animals with secret boyfriends. The no-hoper boyfriends have their eyes set on the Patel wealth, and each shows up at the estate wanting to marry one of the daughters. But because of a (fake) prophecy made by Housefull series staple Akhri Pasta (Chunky Pandey), that any prospective groom who looks at, speaks to or approaches Patel will end up killing him, Sandy (Akshay Kumar) pretends to be crippled, Teddy (Riteish Deshmukh), blind and Bunty (Abhishek Bachchan), mute.
Add to this nonsense an incarcerated don, the real father of the three girls, played by Jackie Shroff, and the return of the three masked men from scene 1. All the young men (six by now) want to marry the three heiresses. In another moment of idiocy, Sandy (who is also schizophrenic), Teddy and Bunty now have additional disabilities. Sandy now has to pretend to be crippled and blind, Teddy is blind and mute and Bunty is mute and crippled.
After much confusion and chaos, the tedious climax unfolds, in what looks like the warehouse of Madame Tussauds, with several jokes built around wax dummies of Jackie Chan, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Rajinikanth. All the elements of the Housefull formula are in place—jokes about the differently abled, demeaning people of colour, female characters who are bimbos and a father whom everyone is trying to dupe.
Ganga, Jamuna and Saraswati are raised in England but speak with American accents. They are so poor at Hindi that they translate idioms literally. For example, “Calm down" is turned into “Naukri down" and “Aap table ke liye aaye ho na?" is their version of “Are you comfortable?" The joke gets old quickly. It doesn’t really help that the girls are little more than window dressing in Farhad-Sajid’s film and most of the hard work is left up to the three male leads. The brand of humour aligns with previous Housefull films, with a few funny gags but mostly stupid ones.
Housefull released in theatres on Friday.
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