Housefull 3*

Dir:  Sajid-Farhad

Starring: Akshay Kumar, Abhishek Bachchan, Riteish Deshmukh, Jacqueline Fernandes, Lisa Haydon, Nargis Fakhri, Boman Irani, Jackie Shroff, Chunkey Pandey

London millionaire Batuk Patel (Boman Irani) refuses to let his scantily clad daughters – Ganga (Jacqueline Fernandes), Jamuna (Lisa Haydon), and Saraswati (Nargis Fakhri) - get married because bad luck invariably accompanies the wedding of any girl in the family. So the three ladies come up with idiotic plans to convince their father that their planned marriages will be bad-luck free. So Ganga’s beau, Sandy (Akshay Kumar) pretends he’s crippled from the waist down, Jamuna’s beloved, Teddy (Ritesh Deshmukh) feigns blindness, and Saraswati’s sweetheart, Bunty (Abhishek Bachchan) ostensibly can’t speak. Then Jackie Shroff shows up as an ex-underworld don who has an old connection to the Patel family.

Sajid-Farhad who wrote the first two instalments of the franchise and also directed another awful Akshay Kumar starrer, It’s Entertainment, take over the directorial helm from Sajid Khan for the third Housefull film. The results are about as awful as you would expect with a nonsensical plot and "humour" which is racist and routinely offensive. It doesn’t even spare the disabled. A couple of the early puns may make you crack half a smile but there is a gazillion of them and they wear themselves out pretty quickly as they become increasingly predictable.

I’m struggling to find something positive to say about this movie. Okay, so it’s nice to see Lisa Haydon again (somebody please give her a role which shows her off to her best advantage - something like Queen, where she first came to our notice) and there are a couple of semi-catchy numbers. And, oh yes, there is one scene - involving Abhishek Bachchan and a waxwork of Aishwariya Rai – which shows a tiny (extremely tiny) glimmer of intelligence and wit.

Simply awful.

Cut to chase: Crude, rude, offensive, stupid and decidedly not funny.

 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out Of The Shadows **

Dir:  Dave Green

Starring: Megan Fox, Will Arnett, Stephen Amell, Tyler Perry, Laura Linney, Brian Tee

Producer Michael (Transformers) Bay’s 2014’s cinematic reboot of the comic-book based franchise was quite awful. Yet it made tons of money so a sequel was inevitable. The second instalment is a slight improvement with a somewhat more coherent plot and better special effects and action. Even the four eponymous heroes are allowed to develop distinct personalities.

Yet Michaelangelo, Donatello, Leonardo and Raphael still look a bit creepy in this, their latest, CGI-based, incarnation. And while the end of the world is on hand thanks to an alien invasion the stakes just don’t seem that high as you never really become that heavily invested in their events on the screen. The humour’s also forced, and the performances by the non-animated cast merely perfunctory (though Stephen Amell appears to be enjoying himself in this foray away from television’s Arrow and Will Arnett doesn’t phone it in). I did feel sorry, though, for multiple-Oscar nominee Laura Linney, on hand here as an alternately befuddled and bemused police chief. Surely, she deserves better material than this. Megan Fox playing journalist April O’Neil is, of course, Megan Fox - hard to take seriously after her multiple, unnecessary trips to the plastic surgeon.

Cut to chase: More turtle  tedium

Kmumtaz1@hotmail.com;  Twitter: @KhusroMumtaz

* Not on your life ** Hardly worth the bother **  ½ Okay for a slow afternoon only *** Good enough for a look see ***½ Recommended viewing **** Don’t miss it **** ½ Almost perfect ***** Perfection