Movie Review : Housefull

Film: Housefull

Cast: Akshay Kumar, Deepika Padukone, Riteish Deshmukh, Lara Dutta, Jiah Khan, Boman Irani

Genre: Comedy

Direction: Sajid Khan

Duration: 2 hours 30 minutes

Critic's Rating:***

Story: Akshay Kumar, the proverbial loser, believes he can ward off his bad luck by finding true love. But each time he falls in love, misfortune strikes and his girlfriend walks out on him. This time, hope begins to float...He finds Deepika Padukone who does love him. But how does he convince her military-man brother, Arjun Rampal and extract himself from the web of lies his friends, Riteish and Lara, have built around him?

Movie Review: Sajid Khan returns after the success of Heyy Baby, a spilt milkfood and soiled diaper soiree that did manage to tickle your funny bone with its infant histrionics. With Housefull, he doesn't stray much and tries to create a similar riot of hilarious episodes, centred around two couples -- Akshay Kumar-Deepika Padukone and Riteish Deshmukh-Lara Dutta. Trouble lies not so much with the couples as with their relatives: Lara's estranged Pappa, Boman Irani and Deepika's angry brother, Arjun Rampal. Can the boys manage to win their beloved's parivar walas? Not an easy task, specially when both are losers of sorts and don't have the mandatory big house, big money, big lifestyle....

The film begins on a funny note, with Akshay trying to seek refuge from his bad luck by moving in with his best buddy, Riteish and his wife, Lara. A vacuum cleaner turned awry and a tryst with a tame tiger on the sofa are some of the spoofs that showcase Akshay Kumar in his quintessential comic act: deadpan humour by the I'm-just-a-simpleton hero. You do settle down for some fun and games, but sadly, the film peters off into a not-so-funny middle with Akshay serenading Jiah Khan and the viewer having to endure a prolonged Chunky Pandey cameo as Aakhri Pasta, an Italian hotelier who actually makes you want to howl than laugh. Thankfully, he is bundled off, but the muddlesome middle has already taken its toll on the film by putting the brakes on comedy. The second half picks up again as the foursome rent a house and the relatives -- Boman and Arjun -- arrive. The game of subterfuge and mistaken identities begins with Akshay reluctantly pitching in as Lara's husband and Deepika's boyfriend and trying his goofy best to win over both Boman and Arjun.

It's literally slapstick humour, with a lot of slaps flying around between simians and humans, humans and humans. Nevertheless, it makes you laugh, provided you don't go looking for artistry and intelligence. Also, you'll find the usual jokes about homosexuality and Gujarati incredulousness, made famous by Kal Ho Na Ho. Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy's audio track has a few peppy numbers which however do not promise to end up as chartbusters, except Mika's `apni to jaise-taise...' The rest of the songs are good while they last. Period. Akshay Kumar and Riteish Deshmukh share a better chemistry between themselves than they do with the girls. Wish the Boman Irani and Lilette Dubey track had been explored further. It did have great potential.

All said and done, Housefull might not set the summer scorching, but it does create a ripple after a prolonged lull at the multiplexes. Let the summer begin to simmer, then sizzle....

A word about:

Performances: Akshay Kumar never laughs in the film, yet manages to make you laugh with his `loser' act. Riteish and Akshay share a combustible chemistry which is much more than we can say about Akshay and Deepika: quite thanda.

Dialogue: Simple and slapstick.

Story: Revolves around the usual formula of a comedy of errors and mixed-up identities.

Cinematography: Vikas Sivaraman keeps his camera mostly indoors, except when it moves to Italy.

Music: Shankar-Ehsan-Loy do not come up with an inspired track. They just fit the bill, except when they reinvent the popular Laawaris number `aapka kya hoga, janab-e-wali'.

Styling: Both Deepika and Lara sport the urbane and chic look with their skimpy dresses. Jiah Khan oscillates between the traditional and the oomphy image by donning both the salwar kameez and the bikini. The boys -- Akshay, Arjun, Riteish -- are cool and casual.

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Sanjay Dutt and Akshay Kumar haven’t forgotten their past clash; are creating trouble on the sets of Blue

Ego clashes between two co-stars on the sets of a film is a director’s worst nightmare. And that’s just what is giving Blue’s director Anthony D’Souza sleepless nights.

Actors Sanjay Dutt and Akshay Kumar’s ego battle is proving to be hazardous to this film they have surprisingly consented to do together.

We hear that owing to Sanju’s demands, the shoot scheduled for Feb 22 had to be canceled. While some claim that Sanju is putting off shooting with Akshay, many say that Akshay too hasn’t done anything particular to make Sanju comfortable.

Little does everyone remember that the Sanjay-Akshay jhadga dates back to 1994, owing to an incident while working together on Raj Sippy’s Amaanat.

Recalls our reliable source, “Akshay was relatively new in the industry then and Raj was planning to picturise a song on him.

When Sanjay got to know about this, he managed to convince Raj to do the song with him instead of Akshay. And Raj had consented.

15 years down the line, Akshay is still nursing a grouse against Sanjay. He tactfully skirted around the topic and even reminded Sanjay of the Amaanat episode. Things get really difficult when the two are together on the sets.”

Director Anthony though prefers to put a brave face and says, “I don’t have any issues on my shoots.

Sanjay and Akshay will be shooting together only from March 1 and our sets are bring readied. The story about whatever happened on Feb 22 isn’t true.”

From Sanjay’s side, Dharam Oberoi, CEO of Sanjay Dutt productions, says, “Akshay and Sanjay have no issues. The two exchange hugs every time they bump into each other.”

However, a source close to actress Lara Dutta, who is also a part of Blue says, “We were informed that there’s a shoot on Feb 22. But just a few days before the shoot, Lara was told that the shoot was canceled.”

Phew! We wish Anthony all the best.

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Movie Review : Billu

Film: Billu (Drama)
Cast: Irrfan Khan, Lara Dutta, Shah Rukh Khan (cameo)
Direction: Priyadarshan
Duration: 2 hours 15 minutes 
Critic’s rating: 

You cast Irrfan Khan in your film and you have half your work already done. The actor takes a role and interprets it in a way that is purely his own. So much so, you begin to wonder where does Irrfan end and Billu begin. Or maybe still, perhaps, there never was a duality between the two. Perhaps Irrfan and Maqbool, Irrfan and Ashoke (The Namesake), Irrfan and Monty (Life in a Metro) are one and same: the actor and the character being perfectly in sync with each other. And no, Irrfan doesn't play it the same always. With his mercurial craft, he has the ability to pitch it high, low, hysterical, restrained, violent, genteel...any which way the script demands.

Here, he plays Billu, the barber (hair dresser, hair stylist or what you will) with an easy charm and an exquisite finesse. As the archetypal Sudama (poor friend), he brings to life a throbbing picture of dignity and restraint, as he tries to cope with his abject poverty on one end and the arrival of his flashy superstar friend, Sahir Khan (Shah Rukh Khan) on the other. Sahir is his childhood buddy, going back to those carefree days when the two shared their deprivation with brotherly warmth and care. Billu, the marginally better-off buddy, not only shared his tiffin but also sold his gold ear rings to send showman Sahir to Mumbai for a career in films. And once their paths diverged, he quietly crept back into the shadows with his crumbling barber's shop and his frugal family life, while Sahir got cloistered in his ivory tower that results from too much fame and glamour.

Now that Sahir's back in the picturesque village for a corny film shoot, life doesn't remain the same for laid-back Billu. Everyone gets a whiff of their legendary friendship and wants a slice of the Sahir pie. Everyone, except Billu who doesn't want to embarrass his friend with his decrepit state, despite the fact that the village almost threatens to boycott him and his broken barber's chair.

The film may not have done well in its Tamil version (Kuselan), but Priyadarshan has suitably peppered it with some heart-tugging moments to make it a moving ode to friendship and ordinariness. Of course, Irrfan manages to invest the ordinary with kingly glow, even as Shah Rukh lends the glamour quotient with his filmy naach-gaana. Surprisingly, Lara Dutta too manages to fit in with her deglamourised avtar as the lowly barber's better-half, in crumpled cottons and low-back cholis.

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Is Lara Dutta indebted to Kelly Dorji?

 

Lara Dutta is looking stunning these days.

Get into conversation with her and she gracefully unveils her very beautiful mind, too. All spiritual, and completely into yoga and meditation, it’s ironic that she was embracing these sciences that taught you to love more when she was falling out of love! “You don’t fall out of love,” she explains, “You’re given certain relationships in your life, and an immense amount of spiritual growth happens through them. I’ll always be indebted to the relationship that I was in, and to the person who was in the relationship with me, because both of us learnt life’s most valuable lessons in the period of time that we were together.”

So though Dutta hasn’t fallen out of love, she has fallen in love all over again! And no, we aren’t going to ask for any more philo-lessons on pyar-vyar...

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