Wednesday, June 02, 2010
Housefull
Housefull
It’s just not funny—or maybe it is sadly amusing to find a 40-plus actor being made to act coy, saying he doesn’t know what to do on a honeymoon. This is Sajid Khan’s idea of humour in Housefull.
Maybe audiences should be touched that a filmmaker has tried so hard to them laugh—pity that for him comedy means corny exchanges lines like: Q: “Where did you get this sher?” A: “From the sher bazaar.”
Haha! Anyway, Aarush (Akshay Kumar—drumming up the requisite energy) the coy dude, believes that bad luck follows him. Just dumped by his girlfriend (Malaika Arora) in Macau, he piles on to his friends in London— casino croupier Baburao (Ritiesh Deshmukh--okay) and his waitress wife Hetal (Lara Dutta—not bad!). Her father, back in India (Boman Irani—loud!) has been sulking because she married beneath herself, and for this, his mother (Honey Irani) keeps thrashing him. Okay.. haha some more.
Aarush marries Devika (Jiah Khan), who dumps him on the wedding night, to run off with some gora extra. He then falls in love with Sandi (Deepika Padukone). Hetal’s father and Sandi’s stern cop brother Krishna (Arjun Rampal--sleepwalking), land up unexpectedly and Aarush and company are caught up in a hysterical web of lies, so that the two men don’t find out that the girls have married good-for-nothing losers.
A mansion is hired from a loony widow (Lillete Dubey) and a black kid picked up to pass off as a grandson (who vanishes without a whimper when this gag is played out). The ill-timed entries and exits of the characters are out of old-fashioned British faces, so popular with Mumbai’s theatre folk. The lies escalate and blow up into laughing gas (literally!) at the Buckingham Palace.
There may be a section of the audience that goes to the cinema just for ‘timepass’ and will laugh at some of the idiotic gags, because, well, they paid to laugh and might as well try, but there isn’t one fresh track or one original gag in the film. Does anyone even find gay jokes funny any more? Sajid Khan may have paid tribute to everyone from Manmohan Desai to Hrishikesh Mukherjee in the credits, but his influences are those quickie comedies that Hollywood comedians like Ben Stiller and Adam Sandler churn out with such regularity.
No expense has been spared in giving the film a lavish look—shooting in the UK and Italy (where Chunky Pandey turns up as hotel owner called Aakhri Pasta!), the girls cast just for their ability to carry off bikinis.
The makers are bound to claim that Housefull is a big hit; if it does well, it would be because of the timing of the release-- in the midst of vacations and after a long dry spell in the cinemas-- than any special merits.
It’s just not funny—or maybe it is sadly amusing to find a 40-plus actor being made to act coy, saying he doesn’t know what to do on a honeymoon. This is Sajid Khan’s idea of humour in Housefull.
Maybe audiences should be touched that a filmmaker has tried so hard to them laugh—pity that for him comedy means corny exchanges lines like: Q: “Where did you get this sher?” A: “From the sher bazaar.”
Haha! Anyway, Aarush (Akshay Kumar—drumming up the requisite energy) the coy dude, believes that bad luck follows him. Just dumped by his girlfriend (Malaika Arora) in Macau, he piles on to his friends in London— casino croupier Baburao (Ritiesh Deshmukh--okay) and his waitress wife Hetal (Lara Dutta—not bad!). Her father, back in India (Boman Irani—loud!) has been sulking because she married beneath herself, and for this, his mother (Honey Irani) keeps thrashing him. Okay.. haha some more.
Aarush marries Devika (Jiah Khan), who dumps him on the wedding night, to run off with some gora extra. He then falls in love with Sandi (Deepika Padukone). Hetal’s father and Sandi’s stern cop brother Krishna (Arjun Rampal--sleepwalking), land up unexpectedly and Aarush and company are caught up in a hysterical web of lies, so that the two men don’t find out that the girls have married good-for-nothing losers.
A mansion is hired from a loony widow (Lillete Dubey) and a black kid picked up to pass off as a grandson (who vanishes without a whimper when this gag is played out). The ill-timed entries and exits of the characters are out of old-fashioned British faces, so popular with Mumbai’s theatre folk. The lies escalate and blow up into laughing gas (literally!) at the Buckingham Palace.
There may be a section of the audience that goes to the cinema just for ‘timepass’ and will laugh at some of the idiotic gags, because, well, they paid to laugh and might as well try, but there isn’t one fresh track or one original gag in the film. Does anyone even find gay jokes funny any more? Sajid Khan may have paid tribute to everyone from Manmohan Desai to Hrishikesh Mukherjee in the credits, but his influences are those quickie comedies that Hollywood comedians like Ben Stiller and Adam Sandler churn out with such regularity.
No expense has been spared in giving the film a lavish look—shooting in the UK and Italy (where Chunky Pandey turns up as hotel owner called Aakhri Pasta!), the girls cast just for their ability to carry off bikinis.
The makers are bound to claim that Housefull is a big hit; if it does well, it would be because of the timing of the release-- in the midst of vacations and after a long dry spell in the cinemas-- than any special merits.
Labels: Cinemaah
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