Movie Review: Housefull 2

One evening ten years ago I visited a dentist who for two and a half hours pulled out a tooth and then drilled the largest hole on my body. The pain was excruciating, but what kept me going was the knowledge that the throbbing pain was for a meaningful purpose. Housefull 2 is like that miserable evening, but instead it doesn’t have any meaningful intention. If one films all of my grumbling, hair-tearing, eye-rolling, sighing, groaning, whimpering, whining and slouching throughout this movie and sped it up, it could be marketed as a found footage comedy funnier than the whole of Housefull 2. Because it would be more unique, vastly more watchable and mercifully shorter. 

Housefull 2 is stark proof that watching Sajid Khan’s movies can fill one with the compulsion to plunge a large syringe full of Novocain into oneself with hope of ending the pain. A worthless story told in numbing images, the film merrily dances on the line between the completely unpleasant and the utterly distasteful. It's been five years since Sajid vomited out Heyy Baby and brought a new, satanic power to Bollywood with his own style of loud, cloyingly horrible filmmaking - a lethal combination of a large cast and obtuse jokes that have enraged critics, but scored big at the box office. And just like 2010’s Housefull, the sequel has all the cinematic value of donkey porn.

The first atrocious thing about this movie is its two and a half hour plus runtime. The longer the film rambles on, the more irritating it is, and the more you see how little Sajid cares for your threshold level of pain. I'd go into the ‘story’ and ‘plot’ but it’s nothing more than an excuse to get one dozen characters inside the house of a wealthy British Goonda Mithun, so I won't insult your intelligence by implying that Housefull 2 has anything new or exciting to offer. If you watch this movie, you will have to endure a musical cue of Akshay Kumar producing a sound that is a mixture of burping and orgasming. You will also have to witness a snake biting Shreyas Talpade’s crotch while John Abraham slaps his head and makes contorted faces. You will have to see a crocodile biting Ritesh deshmukh’s ass while Akshay Kumar squints his eyes and screams. You will have to see a horny Mithun running behind an overweight dwarf maid while folding his lungi. And when Johnny Lever is the lone voice of reason in the film, then you know you’re in for a turgid ride. 

The jokes are woeful and are delivered by the actors with the subtlety of a seizure. What Housefull 2 does have in abundance is an unending parade of flimsy mistaken identity gags, prudish movie-star mugging camera angles, grotesque makeup, a distasteful devotion to malignant humor and the intolerable air of self-satisfied moviemakers cobbling drivel together for a 100 crore weekend.  

While Ritesh is borderline likable, Akshay Kumar plays the same character he has played in every comedy film of his to date. Shreyas Talpade and the ultra-pretty Shazahn Padamsee are almost nonexistent, but Jacqueline Fernandez, Zarine Khan and John Abraham make you want to jam a pen in your ears. If you have ever seen Asin at work before, then you can tell already that she was miscast - I just felt sorry for her and wondered if another director might be able to showcase her better. The less said about Rishi and Randhir Kapoor, Boman Irani and Chunkey Pandey the better, because their performances are straight out of a drunken game of dumb charades. Sajid-Wajid’s music makes the songs of the first Housefull sound like the works of Mozart. 

Housefull 2 is the zenith of ugly filmmaking. As someone who loved Sajid Khan’s TV shows in the past I found myself regretting that affection less than 10 minutes into this movie. Any filmmaker naturally evolves as he makes his films, Sajid strives to devolve and count his currency notes. The only explanation for the existence of Housefull 2 seems to be Sajid wondering how terrible a film can be and still cross the 100 crore mark.