Cruising In Absurdities, Housefull Gets No High Five

Direction: Tarun Mansukhani

It is a mad-mad party on a billionaire’s cruise. Roy Ranjeet Dobriyal (Ranjeet) is to celebrate his centenary birthday. On the roll-call at the cruise are: Ship captain Sameer (Nikitin Dheer), event managing company personnel including Maya (Chitrangada Singh), Bedi (Dino Morea), Shiraz (Shreyas Talpade), Aakhri Pasta (Chunky Pandey), Batuk Patel (Johnny Lever), lawyer Lucy (Soundarya Sharma) and Dr Aman Joshi (Akankshdeep Sabir). Also on the ship is Dev Dobriyal (Fardeen Khan).

The fragile storyline makes no bones about being loosely knit, nonsensical and largely situational. The ‘Housefull’ franchise has hitherto played by comedy — largely slapstick; this time round, it turns a new leaf, bringing in a suspense thriller facet. While the logic content remains constant, the laughs quotient answers the law of diminishing returns.

Senior Dobriyal dies on the eve of his birthday No. 100. He bequeaths his property to his son Jolly. À la Waris (1969), three fraudsters claiming to be Jolly arrive on board with their seeming spouses: Jalaludin (Riteish Deshmukh) with partner Zara (Sonam Bawa), Jalbhushan (Abhishek Bachchan) and partner Shakuntala (Jacqueline), and Julius (Akshay Kumar) with Kaanchi (Nargis Fakhri). The doctor on board is sent out to get a genetic test on who is the real Jolly, only to be murdered.

The events obviously get more and more circumstantially complex, intellectually challenging, and test your patience. Also arriving in this madhouse cruise are two super-vexed Interpol cops Baba (Sanjay Dutt) and Bhidu (Jackie Shroff).

The needle of suspicion moves from one Jolly claimant to the other. The camera lingers suggestively on the other members on board. The gals and the guys sing, dance, make merry, and are busy besting one over the other. A few (read very few) laughs keep you partly engaged. Also, you are mentally doing up the crossword puzzle connecting the characters and their credibility. The pace is designed to keep you away from thinking. Goal achieved. One more in the list of suspects is killed. Then, yet another.

‘Housefull 5’ thus moves from ‘Waris’ to ‘Gumnaam’ but constantly is wedded to stupidity, one-liners and seeming situational challenges. The entry of Dhagdu Hulgund (Nana Patekar) expectedly increases the octaves. Nothing really matters.

Everyone in the cast does his bit. Meaning, by implicating that the women do not — or at least having nothing to. Only Sonam Bajwa is worth mentioning. Chitrangada looks attractive. It is pathetic to see such talent going to waste. Most of the guys do their bit. The Jackie Shroff-Sanjay Dutt duo tries to be their boisterous best — with the ‘Khalnayak’ tone in the background always. Akshay Kumar, Riteish Deshmukh and Abhishek Bachchan — three good actors with a fine sense of timing for humour — show their skills but do not necessarily enhance their repute.

There is what is deemed an interesting twist in the finale. Very contrived, except that it brings on board the real Jolly. The journey of the franchise that started in 2010 with Sajid Khan is seemingly robust one and a half decades later but under Tarun Mansukhani it is ‘Housefull’ to ‘Housefool’.