Eros International and Nadiadwala Grandson Entertainment Pvt. Ltd.’s Housefull 3 (UA) is the third film in the Housefull franchise.
Batook Patel (Boman Irani) has three pretty daughters, Ganga (Jacqueline Fernandez), Jamuna (Lisa Haydon) and Saraswati (Nargis Fakhri). They live in London. Batook Patel does not want his daughters to ever marry but they secretly fall in love. Ganga, a psychiatrist by profession, is in love with Sandy (Akshay Kumar) who has a split personality. At the very mention of the word ‘Indian’, Sandy becomes violent and uncontrollable, a character he refers to as Sundy. Jamuna is in love with Teddy (Ritesh Deshmukh) who is known to use incorrect words in his conversations so that what he ends up saying is completely different from what he intends to say. Saraswati is in love with Bunty (Abhishek Bachchan), an aspiring rapper. To convince his three glamorous daughters that they should not get married, Batook Patel asks Aakhri Pasta (Chunkey Panday), his friend who runs a roadside food stall in London, to come home in the guise of an astrologer.
Aakhri Pasta announces that the moment Ganga’s husband would set foot in their palatial home, Batook Patel would die. He also prophesies that Batook Patel would breathe his last the moment Jamuna’s husband would see him. Likewise, Batook Patel would be no more the moment Saraswati’s husband would speak the first word to him. The girls are distraught because if they love their respective boyfriends, they also love their father and don’t want to lose him. Although Sandy, Teddy and Bunty, unknown to each other, don’t love their respective girlfriends, they think of a way to enter the home of Batook Patel without endangering his life – and this, because they are all after his money. Therefore, Sandy comes to Batook Patel’s mansion as a wheel-chair-bound invalid so that he doesn’t need to ‘set foot’. Teddy comes home as a blind man so that he can’t ‘see’ Batook Patel. And Bunty comes as a guy who can’t speak at all – so that he would never need to talk to Batook Patel. All the three boyfriends arrive on the same day and are introduced by the girls to their father. Batook Patel is very sad.
The three boys strike up a bond of friendship with one another soon after they start living in the mansion and when they realise that all of them are lying about themselves and that they have a common goal – to make fast money. Even as the love stories progress right under Batook Patel’s nose, comes Urja Nagre (Jackie Shroff) on the scene.
Who is Urja Nagre? Why does Batook Patel not want his daughters to ever get married?
There are three other suitors for the three girls. They are Rohan (Nikitin Dheer), Rishi (Samir Kochhar) and Rajeev (Arav Chowdhary).
Who are Rohan, Rishi and Rajeev? How do Sandy, Teddy and Bunty ultimately get married to Ganga, Jamuna and Saraswati respectively?
K. Subhaash and Jitendra Parmar have penned a mad-hatter comedy which cares little for logic but a lot for entertainment. Fun and frolic are the catchwords and for giving the audience a good time, the two story writers go to any extent. What, therefore, emerges is non-stop laughter. The screenplay, written by Farhad-Sajid, with additional screenplay by Rajan Agarwal, is hilarious. Again, while logic has been thrown to the winds, the fun quotient is very high. The best part is that each of the main characters has a typicality which is amusing and highly entertaining. Ganga, Jamuna and Saraswati, having grown up in London, speak Hindi with difficulty but often end up literally translating English idioms in Hindi, to hilarious outcome. For example, Ganga tells Sandy, “Chalo, baahar latakte hain.” What she means to tell a puzzled Sandy is, “Let’s hang out.” Sandy, being the split personality that he is, gets into Sundy mode sometimes. Teddy creates comedy with his wrong usage of words. Bunty raps at the slightest opportunity. Batook Patel has a typical style of talking wherein he uses names of established brands in his day-to-day conversations and creates comedy from that. Urja Nagre has a penchant for employing commonly-used abbreviations in his sentences but those abbreviations mean something very different, which he explains soon after using them. Aakhri Pasta continues his ‘I’m a joking’ refrain from the earlier films in the franchise.
Another good part of the screenplay is that there are three or four very cleverly worked-out comic sequences which will bring the house down with laughter. Like item songs, these ‘item’ sequences are a major highlight. The dinner-table sequence, in which the girlfriends fib about their respective boyfriends, is one such ‘item’ sequence which will have the audience in splits. Likewise, the sequence in which Batook Patel sets out to test whether the three boyfriends of his three daughters are, in fact, incapable of walking, talking and seeing, is hilarious. The confusion created when the three boyfriends face Urja Nagre and Batook Patel together is very enjoyable. The writers have taken cinematic liberties galore and borrowed from the personal/professional lives of their actors to good advantage. For instance, Teddy (Ritesh Deshmukh), known for his slip of the tongue, at one point, addresses girlfriend Jamuna alias Jenny as Genelia (who is Ritesh’s wife in real life). Similarly, Sandy (Akshay Kumar) gets a seizure when he remembers the Indian flag being hoisted in a scene from Airlift (which starred Akshay Kumar). Again, Bunty (Abhishek Bachchan) very heroically saves the wax statue of Aishwarya Rai Bachchan (his wife in real life) from falling down and breaking.
The climax, set in the wax factory, is outstanding and will be loved by the audience.
On the minus side, if one may use the term, is the fact that several jokes are very class-appealing because of the liberal use of English in the dialogues. Also, one has got to be alert all the time because some of the jokes are otherwise lost. The first 15 minutes of the film are slow and also a bit boring but they serve to establish the characters.
Dialogues, written by Farhad-Sajid, are simply outstanding and deserve to be praised.
Akshay Kumar does a tremendous job of both, Sandy and Sundy. His energy is amazing and his performance is simply splendid. He excels in every single scene of the film and makes doing comedy – one of the most difficult things – appear like a left-hand task. Indeed, an award-winning performance from Akshay Kumar. Abhishek Bachchan is very good as Bunty and has his moments. Ritesh Deshmukh has a fantastic sense of comic timing and is just too endearing as Teddy. He uses his facial expressions to great advantage to evoke laughter. Jacqueline Fernandez, Lisa Haydon and Nargis Fakhri are perfectly cast and add a lot of glamour and sex appeal. Their costumes are lovely. Jacqueline Fernandez acts ably. Nargis Fakhri is quite alright. Lisa Haydon makes her presence felt. Boman Irani excels in whatever he does. He makes the character of the crazy Batook Patel believable. Jackie Shroff leaves a mark as Urja Nagre. Chunkey Panday is cute in the role of Aakhri Pasta. Nikitin Dheer (as Rohan), Samir Kochhar (as Rishi) and Arav Chowdhary (as Rajeev) lend the necessary support. Adele Oni (as Margaret), Rebecca Mayer (as Maria) and Emilyne Mondo (as Mona) are natural. Sagar Arya (as Mallya), Anwesha Arya (as Mallya’s wife), Sher Khan (as Hulk), Huni Jalaf (as Harry) and Theo Hayden (as Harsh) are effective. Paul Leavers (as the priest), Stephen Parker (as the Skype judge), Christopher Hines (as the judge at the audition) and the others are adequate.
Farhad-Sajid’s direction is very good. The duo adopts a narrative style which is unapologetic and completely in synch with the script. They have made the film a true mad-hatter comedy where anything is possible. Music is a major plus point. Although there is no super-hit song, each song is enjoyable and entertaining in its own way. The best song is ‘Pyar ki maa ki’ (composed by Sharib-Toshi). ‘Taang uthake’ (by Sohail Sen) and ‘Malamaal’ (by Mika Singh and Milind Gaba) are also very nice numbers. ‘Fake ishq’ (by Tanishk Bagchi) has its own appeal. Lyrics (by Sameer Sen, Farhad-Sajid, Sanjeev Chaturvedi, Mamta Sharma, Arafat Mehmood, Rani Malik, Raool (for raps), Manoj Yadav and Danish Sabri) are very appropriate and go perfectly with the mood of the film. Song picturisations (by Ganesh Acharya, Ahmed Khan, Remo D’Souza and Farhad-Sajid) are eye-filling and colourful. Julius Packiam’s background music is of a good standard. ‘Anl’ Arasu’s action scenes and stunts are appropriately entertaining. Production designing (by Rajnish Hedao, Sumit Basu, Snigdha Basu and Maria Chryssikos) is of a very fine standard. Steven Bernard’s editing is very sharp.
On the whole, Housefull 3 is an entertainer all the way. It will keep the audience laughing in the cinemas, and the producers and distributors laughing all the way to the bank.