Housefull 4 movie review: Dear Akshay Kumar and team, making weird faces doesn't make humour anymore

Gone are the days when making weird faces used to amount to humour. Movie making has evolved big time, and the genre of comedy is not an exception to that. Housefull 4 is one such film that is loaded with stale comedy and a bad screenplay.

STORYLINE

Three friends - Harry (Akshay Kumar), Roy (Riteish Deshmukh) and Max (Bobby Deol) are in urgent need of 5 million dollars as they owe the money to a gangster. The quickest and the easiest way to do it they thought is to get married to girls who hail from a billionaire family.

The three friends woo their respective ladies – Kriti (Kriti Sanon), Pooja (Pooja Hegde) and Neha (Kriti Kharbanda) with the song "Ek Chumma", and soon the sisters get ready to marry them.

Meanwhile, Harry, who often gets weird dreams and has a weird condition of forgetting things every time he hears a loud noise, starts recalling his life in the previous birth. He recalls that he was prince Bala, who wanted to marry Kriti, princess Madhu in her past life.

Roy was a dancer, Bangdu Maharaj, and Max was a royal bodyguard, Dharamputra in their previous births. A lot of drama unfolds in Harry's attempts to make all the other characters remember their past lives, as he fears he and his two friends would end up marrying their sisters-in-law in their current life.

The movie then moves forward to show how they finish an unfinished business or revenge saga that started in 1419 and ends in 2019.

PERFORMANCES

Housefull 4 does not have any sequence or scene that would require the actors to put in extra efforts in terms of acting. It is all about good comic timing, which Akshay proves to be having the best among the other cast.

Riteish is good too but he does not have many punch lines. Bobby Deol is certainly not fit for comic roles. The three actresses do a decent job, but Kriti Sanon gets the maximum spotlight.

Chunky Panday as Aakhri Pasta and Johnny Lever as Winston Churchgate (Giggly in past life) are more or less irritating. Rana Daggubati as monstrous Raja Gama is fine.

POSITIVES

There are a few funny moments and dialogues that do tickle your funnybones. The climax of the film is better than most parts of the movie. VFX is done well. Songs are entertaining.

NEGATIVES

In a franchise like Housefull, much better comedy is expected. Scenes where Akshay, Johnny make weird faces are more annoying than funny. The film lacks in originality also as Bala's character is inspired by Sacha Baron Cohen's character in satire comedy, The Dictator.

Housefull 4 has a bad screenplay. Although comedy films do not primarily rely on logic, the director should have at least maintained the minimum of it. For instance, Jonny's character is like any other regular man in his current life, but he turns feminine when he recalls his past life, where he was a woman. Overall, the quality of comedy is very much average.

VERDICT

Housefull 4 is one film that entertains a little and bores more. With outdated comedy and very little to make you laugh, this one ends up being a disappointing affair. Akshay Kumar is the only saving grace to some extent, but that's certainly not enough.