Film: Housefull 2
Director: Sajid Khan
Cast: Akshay Kumar, John Abraham, Riteish Deshmukh, Shreyas Talpade, Asin, Jaqueline Fernandes, Zarine Khan, Shazhan Padamsee, Rishi Kapoor, Randhir Kapoor, Mithun Chakrabarthi
Rating: ***

You walk into the theatre expecting another film with the typical Sajid Khan brand of humour (read: crass and slapstick comedy). Well, you won’t be disappointed at all on that front as that brand of humour is intact here too. But surprisingly, even the upholders of good cinema and the more intellectually mobile upper-class will find it hard from cracking up at every scene in this one. So, is it silly? Yes. Loud? Yes. Crass? Yes. But is it entertaining? YES! If you have enjoyed films in the crass-mass comedy genre, then you’ll definitely enjoy this one. Even if you didn’t, you will still find yourself leave the theatre grinning. And in what’s easily a rarity in Bollywood, the sequel is actually better than the original.

As for the story, well not that it matters, but here it is: Two Kapoor sons — one real, who is born out of duty Chintu (Rishi), the other born out of love Dabboo (Randhir) as they spell it out — share a love to hate relationship. So while the brothers compete with each other to get their daughters married to the richest boy, their animal-loving daughters fight for the same award for protection of animals, and not to be outdone their wives fight for the face lift and botox appointments at a cosmetic clinic. After Jai’s (Shreyas) father gets a heart attack on being insulted by Chintu Kapoor, the dutiful son vows to avenge his father’s condition.

He gets in touch with Jolly (Riteish), whose father JD (Mithun) is supposedly the richest man in UK. Together they rope in Max (John) to pose as Jolly and promise marriage to Heena (Asin) and then back out of it at the last minute to hurt Chintu. But a confusion leads to Max promising marriage to Randhir for his daughter Bobby (Jacqueline) instead. So, then they hire Sunny (Akshay) for the job. Riteish meanwhile is in love with JLo (Zareen), and Shreyas with Parul (Shazahn). Both Rishi and Randhir end up believing that their prospective son-in-law is JD’s son Jolly. Also in the picture is Bakul (Boman) with whose daughter JD had promised to get his son married. With the dirty dozen in the picture, one comical situation after another is unleashed on you and before you can recover and decide if what you are seeing and hearing is actually making sense, you are already onto the next scene and laughing nevertheless.

Akshay scores with his ‘aiye’ Ranjeet act and hits bull’s eye with his impeccable timing, and John’s not too far behind. With dialogues like George Michael ka toh pata nahin, but you can have faith in me and Brad ka to pata nahin, magar tere wajah se hum pit mein zaroor hain,’ he manages to make you smile even if at the sheer silliness of it all. Asin, Riteish and Shreyas show a natural knack for comedy too and are equally impressive as they keep up to the comic timing. Giving this Gen equal takkar are the three seniors, Rishi, Mithun and Randhir who seem at ease playing OTT fathers. Chunky, Boman and the rest do fairly okay too.

When you have Akshay and John, it’s only fair to have some action too, so there’s action, an item song, guest appearances by a crocodile and a python too to keep the tempo going of this slapstick comedy that speeds up at good pace. The dialogues range from silly to super-silly, but are treated with enough wit to pass them as humour. Though there are still enough of them that might make you choke even if you decide to not let sense interfere in the nonsensical going-ons. Further on the downside, the end is a tad boring and seems stretched. The filmmakers claim to make films that do nothing but entertain, and in that it’s mission accomplished for sure. So go ahead and watch it for a few hours of undiluted slapstick comedy at its best.