Housefull 5A Movie Review: Makes no sense; makes you laugh?

Housefull 5A
U/A: Comedy, thriller
Dir: Tarun Mansukhani
Cast: Akshay Kumar, Abhishek Bachchan, Riteish Deshmukh 
Rating 2/5

Must a movie make sense, while it makes you laugh, too? Nope. 

Hence, this film, that you cannot judge/begrudge, so long as it makes you laugh. And until when it doesn’t, and then you look around, for the entire second half here, wondering, what do we now?

As it is, the only review the filmmakers — in their proverbial wish for ‘laughing all the way to the bank’ — must hope for, is the title itself. 

That is, a housefull (sic) board for the fifth instalment of a franchise, that must’ve served audiences well enough to make it thus far. 

The last one travelled back in time (600 years) to the song, ‘Bala, shaitaan ka saala’, over half a decade ago. 

Firstly, with several show-timings/screenings at a multiplex, I doubt there’s such a thing as a houseful board anymore — even for single-screen cinemas, most of which don’t exist in cities like Mumbai, anyway. 

What have all these Housefull flicks been about? In the desi tradition of labelling sequels for no reason, they’re entirely unrelated, with a couple of constants, perhaps. 

The genre: an ensemble cast, madcap comedy. Maybe with three actors in common, all through, really: Akshay Kumar, Riteish Deshmukh, and Chunky Panday for ‘Aakhri Pasta’. 

This one’s a murder-mystery, opening like a slasher flick, with a doctor getting knifed on a cruise. The five for Housefull 5 shows up as a khoonipanja (bloodied palm) on the big screen. It’s a smart start, alright. 

The altogether indoor setting thereafter remains the cruise liner. Which means not much to spend on, otherwise. Therefore, the only reason the producers can afford the most stellar line-up for a middle-aged, Bollywood multi-starrer that follows. 

Starring, besides Akshay, Riteish, Chunky: Abhishek Bachchan, Sanjay Dutt, Jackie Shroff, Nana Patekar, Johnny Lever, along with a bevvy of bikinis, Jacqueline Fernandez, Nargis Fakhri, Chitrangda Singh, and others. 

You could earn a doctorate by convincingly deciphering how each character is related to the other. What’s enough to understand is that all these actors/characters step in and out of the screen at will, carrying on with their personal plots in groups, without ever bumping into the other lot. 

This is hard to imagine. Even if the cruise ship is the size of a village. 

But who asked you to imagine much in a movie about a dead body being flung around, that disappears and appears, without causing much fuss either? That bit is probably an ode to Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro (1983). 

Let alone Nana Patekar’s dhoti flying like Marilyn Monroe’s skirt from Some Like It Hot (1959). Or the interrogation scene with cops (Jackie, Sanjay), and Akshay’s Jolly, that’s homage to The Usual Suspects (1995). 

There are three Jollys in this juvenility. Any one of them could be the heir to a rich old man, whose dead body is mentioned above. Veteran villain Ranjeet plays this rich old dude, reprising his stock expression, “Aiyein” (since Housefull 2). 

I know, 50s is the 40s; 60s are the new 50s, etc. Ranjeet is supposed to be 100 years old! He’s willed his jaidaad/property to a long-lost son named Jolly. Which explains three sufficiently shady Jollys, i.e. Akshay, Abhishek, Riteish, who’ve shown up, eyeing that inheritance.

The actors look self-aware enough, suitably pulling off this deliberate pointlessness. Johnny Lever brings credibility to this comedy.
 
Just watching him come out frozen from a fridge, landing right on top of a frying pan, takes us back to ’90s comfort comedy some of us grew up on!

In parts, the film also fits right into that decade, when we simply laughed at the screen, if we felt like it. 

Including casually cheesy sexism — busty secy collecting papers from the floor, while boys zoom in on her — and random anatomical references. They were just jokes; hardly to be judged. 

I think, even in Hollywood, the last such franchise was perhaps Hangover. Housefull 5 references it alright, with a night of debauchery/drunkenness, getting retraced the following morning. 

As did the first Housefull, that you also watch a few glimpses of, as flashback — Akshay in a slapping match with a monkey (from A Night At A Museum), or using vacuum cleaner that sucks up a pet rosella. 

It’s guilt-free stuff.  As in, if you don’t burden pleasure with guilt anyway. To be honest, I’d been with this ‘so bad, that it’s good’ kinda flick all along. What did I expect!

Until the film fizzles out, jokes dry up like the handsome Fardeen Khan’s sunken face, and the gag order is no more in motion. The gags pretty much stop, segueing instead into a series of unfunny item songs.

You figure the filmmakers had the script/stamina to only last up till the interval. So, what do you wait for, as an audience, then? To solve a murder mystery, with nonsensical clues and non-existent alibi!

In case you don’t follow entertainment news/nuggets — be my friend — Housefull 5 has two versions: 5A and 5B. No, literally, like picking airline seats!
 
The film has two endings. I chose to watch Housefull 5A, which means 5B will reveal a different murderer. 

If I had massive donations to be at your service, I could go and report from Housefull 5B. Which will involve sitting until the end, all over again. If I don’t survive it, at least you’ll know who murdered me.

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