Housefull

Starring:
Akshay Kumar
Deepika Padukone
Arjun Rampal
Lara Dutta
Jiah Khan
Riteish Deshmukh
Directed by Sajid Khan
This is a sly tongue firmly and stubbornly in cheek, slick and chic comedy about a loser, or a panauti - a word that recurs ad nauseous in this glorious gasbag of giggles, winks, nudges and innuendos packaged with such polished panache that you don't really care what the inter-relations in the parodied plot finally signify.
Maybe they signify nothing more than a numbing but pleasantly diverting nothingness. But who the heck cares, as long as the tumble of confusions generates a hilarious havoc.
"House full", as the title suggests, is chock of characters who bump into one another and into hard surfaces (including the unresolved edges in the plot) without injury. It's all done in ricocheting rhythms of laughter that rises from the pit of the plot's belly and moves upwards towards us, sometimes missing its target.
More than the screenplay (Milap Zaveri, Sajid Khan, Vibha Singh) which moves helter-skelter in every direction away from the center of the plot and just about succeeds in coming to a reasonably coherent conclusion, it is the bevy of characters who are positioned in the screenplay with a supreme sense of pyramidal aptness.
Every actor shines because he or she knows the idea is to have fun and to transmit that fun to the audience. It's the actors' responsibility to make the maze of inter-relations hold together. They succeed.
Yes, sometimes the actors seem to enjoy the comedy of energetic error more than we do. Beyond a point how many slap-happy slipping-on-the-floor nudge-nudge-wink-wink oops-we-did-it-again rolling of the eyes biting-of-the-tongue jokes can we take??
But somehow it all holds together. Like a jigsaw done in the pages of a comic book and then put on celluloid, "House full" evokes smiles and chuckles in cramped and wide-open spaces.
There is a casino in London where our loser-hero is beckoned to stem losses, a casino waitress (Lara Dutta) whose traditional Gujarati father (Boman Irani, as confidently spontaneous as ever) has disowned her for eloping with a man of her choice, a stern government agent (Arjun Rampal, the only actor who doesn't get to smile in this chirpy (chuckle-fest), a sexy widow (Lilette Dubey) and assorted characters who come and go in a whoosh of wacky misunderstandings, confused identity and half-resolved comic snarls.
Sajid Khan's earlier film "Hay Baby" was a minty mix of mirth and maudlinism. "House full" is a full-on flamboyant farce. Strangely there's a subtlety even tenderness at times, in the way Sajid Khan handles the satirical material centered on the theme of a loser who brings bad luck on himself so often that he begins to wonder if there's a method to the madness of his destiny.
Unlike most situational comedies "House full" chooses the lower octaves of storytelling. The scale is pitched down. Even when the characters scream their lungs out we don't wince in discomfort. This is the most well-behaved comedy in recent times with an array of pert but low-key performances.
Stripped of all buffoonery Akshay Kumar does his most delicately balanced comic act ever. There's a mellow maturity to the way he balances farce with a more underplayed style of comedy. Riteish Deshmukh provides Akshay with the right cues. So do the rest of the actors. Among the three glamorous and sexy ladies Lara Dutta has the best comic timing. Mention must be made of Chunky Pandey who brings the roof down with his Italian-Punjabi accent and burlesque.
"Housefull" looks and feels right. The climax in 'Buckingham Palace' (replete with Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles look-alike) depends too closely on a literal outflow of laughter gas. But that's okay. Delicacy of comic presentation is not a claim that "Housefull" makes. But moments of muffled tenderness just happen in the plot's confounded journey of a loser from no-love to know-love. Worth watching for its mix of the wacky and the more tender variety of laughter.
After a three year long hiatus, Sajid Khan the director of Heyy Babyy returns with his second film Housefull, once again starring the king of comedy Akshay Kumar. For support Akshay has a massive supporting star-cast comprising of actors like Ritesh Deshmukh, Boman Irani, Arjun Rampal, Deepika Padukone, Lara Dutta and Jiah Khan.
Produced under Sajid Nadiadwala's banner, Housefull is the first commercial entertainer to hit screens after Aamir Khan's 3 idiots.
The world's most unlucky man - Aarush (Akshay Kumar) believes his bad luck will only vanish if he finds true love. He marries Devika (Jiah) but finds out she is in love with a non-Indian. An attempt to suicide leads to him being rescued by Sandy (Deepika) and soon the two falls in love. But to win her hand, he has to win over her always suspicious brother, played by Arjun Rampal.
On the other hand, Aarush's friend Bob (Ritesh) is just as unlucky as him. He is married to Hetal (Lara), who suffers from a strained relationship with her father (Boman Irani). How everything falls into place is what this comedy of errors is all about.
Boman Irani sleepwalking while others sing Papa Jag Jayega, Akshay Kumar slapping a monkey and the monkey slapping him back, a tiger making a short appearance as a pet, references to homosexuality typical Dostana - Kal Ho Na Ho style, actors break dancing after a dose of electric shock, actors slapping each other.. and so many other such over-the-top slapstick sequences are all that House full is about. And to director Sajid Khan's credit, he's handled it all pretty well.
Story, sense, meaning... you won't find any of it in House full. Yet the film works, majority because the situations are funny and the performances are top notch. Akshay Kumar is in super form, the actor perfects the act of a loser with a restrained performance. Deshmukh is good and shares good chemistry with Akshay. Boman gets his comic timing right like always. Arjun Rampal is wooden. Chunky Pandey has short - funny role and he does well.
The girls have nothing much to show except skin. Jiah Khan has just one song and a couple of lines to mouth. Deepika Padukone looks great in bikini with those long legs and awesomely sexy tummy. Lara Dutta's clothes seem to be getting shorter with each film. The music is okay. The locals the film has been shot in (London, Italy) are good.
To sum up, House full is entertaining more so in the second half than the first. Lower your expectations a wee bit and give it a try, you'll end up enjoying it.