Moving over the routine and repeatedly quoted phrases ‘keep the brains at home’ or ‘don’t try to find logic’ in such films, actually the most contradicting reviews and viewpoints always happen to be in the case of comedies, as its not necessary that a joke would work for everyone listening or watching resulting in an unanimous response.
So to give you the gist, where the crude and crass humour might work for many, it didn’t work for me all through a major part of the film and I could only laugh a few times in the second half which happened to be slightly better in a film that overall remained a big disappointment.
The fourth film of the franchise also doesn’t work as its first hour turns out to a cautiously made attempt in the awe of BAHUBALI or in a strong hangover of the cult film (beginning with exactly similar titles). And that remains the reason the writer-director stresses more upon the action and drama keeping aside the comedy for a good amount of time building the previous birth premises for the latter half. Post intermission the focus shifts back to comedy revealing the real wives of the three lead actors creating a mad confusion and from here onwards the film becomes a complete, over-streched mess trying too hard to make you laugh with not so hilarious sequences.
As a personal opinion, HOUSEFULL4 fails to deliver as it neither gives enough screen presence to Ritesh Deshmukh (who otherwise does it better than everyone else) nor Chunky Pandey, Johny Lever and Ranjeet who deserved to be presented in a much better way. Moreover, BALA the most famous character of them all featuring in the catchy, popular song also doesn’t have any major scenes or focus that might disappoint many fans. Frankly, I love watching Akshay in this comic avtar since the late 90s, but here his only scenes that somehow brought a broad smile were the ones involving mocking of Parikhsit Sahni’s dialogue delivery and the ‘Bhoola’ insertions, which was again an all inspired idea taken from Rohit Shetty-Johny Lever’s GOLMAAL 3. Plus to some extent Rana Daggubati also managed to do the same towards the climax with his ‘Sa re ga ma’ dialogues.
Completely relying upon the star enigma of Akshay Kumar for the obvious commercial reasons, the makers actually ignore almost everyone else (quite badly Bobby Deol) in surely the costliest and most lavish comedy made till date in Hindi Cinema. And for that very reason, I really wish it had a lot more than served for an inflated ticket price. Particularly its really bizarre how the girls (Kriti Sanon, Kriti Kharbanda and Pooja Hegde) are treated as just nothing in such movies, not given any opportunity to show their individual comic skills and timings. In fact, their Instagram posts in reality are much more entertaining than the entire film to be fair. On the other hand it was so ridiculous to see Nawazuddin Siddiqui badly hamming in a completely forced and unrequired cameo and a song.
Directed and dialogues written by Farhad Samji on the story of producer Sajid Nadiadwala, cannot guess why they are all so obsessed with ‘Shit-toilet humour’ – which questionably also finds an awful reference in the film.
On a concluding note, you may try watching HOUSEFULL4 on the online portals soon as a time pass, but not in the theaters for a ticket sold at all inflated prices. But then, there are too many good things to watch on the online portals too moving over this silly mess.
Rating : 1.5 + 0.5 / 5 (With the additional 0.5 for the hard worked visual grandeur and vfx courageously tried in a comedy genre)
Note : The film is a Diwali release and its really strange that where the consumer market reduces the prices for their customers at the time of festivals and holiday weekends. The multiplexes (along with the makers), increase the ticket price at the time of a biggie, exploiting their viewers/customers taking them for granted, quite shamelessly.
That is exactly the practice BTC has been opposing since long. To be specific, (clearing the confusion of many), higher ticket prices at multiplexes - is one thing that can still be accepted as per the quality services offered. But increasing the prices every time a big film comes on festivals, holiday weekends and even in normal Fridays, is sheer exploitation of the ticket buyers and nothing else.
So as per BTC tradition one star gets deducted from every such film’s ratings due to the timely increased prices taking the viewers for granted.
Hence the Net Ratings are : 1 / 5
