Housefull 5 Has Akshay Kumar Doing Akshay Kumar Things

THERE IS SOMETHING INNATELY AWKWARD about enjoying Akshay Kumar doing comedy. The feeling is similar to reading old scrapbooks and being amused at an earlier version of oneself. Or, meeting someone from the past with thorny opinions and enjoying their company briefly. To enjoy Akshay Kumar doing comedy is to reckon with his problematic brand of humour and appreciate his genius of making even the most worn-out jokes fun. If there is a conundrum here, it is only exemplified in his latest, Housefull 5, a film version of the actor’s absurd hilarity.

Nothing about Housefull 5 looked good. The film has 19 actors, an ensemble so off-kilter that it can convince anyone about the dearth of employment in Bollywood. Written by Farhad Samji and Tarun Mansukhani, the thriller comedy has two endings (5A and 5B) in an economy when makers are struggling to end one film well. And, more crucially, it is an extension of a franchise that has a history of mining humor at the expense of every living being except men.

The bad news is that nothing much has changed. Monkeys make an appearance, a previous gag of a vacuum cleaner killing a bird is repeated, middle-aged men continue to lust after young women (Shreyas Talpade, unfairly, shoulders most of the cringe scenes), and women are reduced to the foot of the footnotes. They are only included for reaction shots. Multiple scenes are stitched together and not one of them makes sense. Ranjeet’s character (also called Ranjeet) dies thrice and still is never fully dead, Johny Lever’s character enters a kitchen without clothes thinking it is a sauna, Nana Patekar arrives for a cruise wearing dhoti, and Fardeen Khan refuses to emote even when his life depends on it. To put it succinctly: Housefull 5 reiterates, perpetuates and affirms every callous joke all of the Housefull franchise is known for.

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The tricky bit here is the latest instalment also comprises bonkers humour and situational comedy that I am willing to admire for how broken they are. One has to really see to believe, but explain this to me: how does one conceive the following? Kumar wrestling with a parrot, the parrot being called Gucci, cops (Jackie Shroff and Sanjay Dutt) threatening Kumar by reading off instructions from a wall (“mind your step”), Kumar injuring his hand and then inadvertently playing a guitar because someone handed him that. This is not radical, transgressive writing. In fact, this is no writing at all and yet, someone went to an obscure part of their brain for this. As the kids say these days: “the writers used 100 percent of their brain” and I stand defeated in grudging awe.

Billionaire Ranjeet Dobriyal dies before celebrating his 100th birthday on a cruise. Preparations are done and his death punctures nothing. But his will does. Ranjeet reads it out as a hologram (don’t ask), telling his associates that a majority of his wealth will go to his son Jolly, from his first marriage. No one has seen him and nothing about him is known except that Jolly has a burn mark on his back (a creepy detail for a father to know) and that he is married to a foreigner (also a little weird). In a day’s time, three Jollys, of different faiths, arrive (Abhishek Bachchan, Riteish Deshmukh, and Kumar) on the cruise, and before one can guage who is telling the truth, murders start happening.

Those familiar with Housefull would know that the premise is just an excuse. It exists to platform an unhingedness that shape shifts as the film unfolds. It is difficult to keep up (a lot of Housefull 5 feels like a private joke among the actors) but there is something to be said about the commitment Kumar and Deshmukh bring to this dialled up tonality. A lot feels jaded but the actors keep at it till it breaks you. You laugh with the film and then, awkwardly at yourself for being tickled on watching a parrot being vengeful. Granted it says something about me but it says a whole lot more about the current state of Hindi cinema that has left us this parched for fun.

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