Housefull 3 Movie Review: Comedy Ki Maa Bahen!

Comedy Ki Maa Bahen…Nothing  Salvages This Pathetic Comedy Except Akshay Kumar

Movie: Housefull 3

Starring: Akshay Kumar, Abhishek Bachchan, Ritesh Deshmukh, Boman Irani , Jackie Shroff, Lisa Haydon, Jacqueline Fernandez, Nargis  Fakhri.

Directed by: Sajid-Farhad

Movie Review: Nothing prepares you for the assault on all aesthetic consideration in this mirthless , and worthless, comedy.

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Nothing at all. Not even the opening when Nikitin Dheer, Sameer Kocchar and Aarav Chowdhary loot  jewellery like they had just seen Dhoom 2 for the third time.

Besides Akshay Kumar battling bravely to beef up the burlesque, there is no maa-baap to salvage the maa-bahencomedy about three losers(yes that’s how they are described by their girl friends) eyeing a London Gujarati millionaire’s wealth . Or maybe ‘eyeing’ is not the right word considering Riteish Deshmukh plays blind to obtain entry into the Gujju’s mansion and millions .

Later Ritesh turns paraplegic (or apaahij, as he’s called in this blissfully  improper comedy) while Akshay turns blind, while Abhishek  turns….well, let’s just say he tries to mock some other human disability.One being interchangeable with another.

Perhaps one disability that Indian cinema needs to address is the failure to be funny in lowbrow comedies. Mocking the disabled, ridiculing skin colour(one dark skinned child is described as “single-screen type”) and pervasively attacking good taste  do not constitute the integral ingredients of  comedy.

It gets worse when the purported humour  chooses to get repetitive for no other reason except to keep the proceedings moving even after the plot has lost all its steam.The second-half is dotted with unmistakable evidence of a writer’s block . The gags virtually come to a standstill while the writers figure out ways to keep the spirit of comedy from collapsing completing. So in one post-interval sequence all the characters speak in Gujarati for  a while.

We all love Modiji . But this is baffling.

Standing at the centre of this mirthless mess is Akshay Kumar trying to infuse life into irremediably dead scenes. He is saddled with the task of  playing a  a split personality, a psychological vanity that the script is ill equipped to handle. The “comedy” is much better off  insulting every minority  and majority group of people from blacks to bimbos.

The boobyprize for the most obnoxious misogynist  line ever goes to Chunky Pandey who tells Boman Irani(and I paraphrase), “If you don’t want your daughters to marry get their uterus removed, then who would marry them?”

Censors on leave, perhaps? Or did they just not get it while Pandey and Irani hammed so heftily it felt like there was no tomorrow.

While Akshay and his two partners in crime Abhishek Bachchan and Riteish Deshmukh manage to whip up a semblance of , shall we say, self-pleasuring in the chaos of conflicting interests, the three heroines vie for the honour of being the worst actresses of  the post-Vimi  generation.  Oh yes, Jacqueline, Lisa and Nargis playing  three exceptionally stupid Londoners, get to dance to  the vintage Cyndi Lauper track Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.

Not just girls, we too want to have fun.  Housefull 3, directed Sajid and Farhad takes us the other way. Devoid of all laughter this is that one dreadful moment in the history of Bollywood comedies that we had hoped would never arrive , where even Akshay Kumar mouths double meaning dialogues about nothing ‘standing’ in his life.

Well Akshay ,  sorry to say this. But this is the most flaccid comedy of your career.