- Date of Release: 06 June 2025
- Genre: Comedy, Drama, Mystery, Thriller
- Language: Hindi
- Watch On: Theatres Only
Housefull 5 (Both Versions Review; 5A And 5B Versions Review)
Introduction
You remember that one annoying relative who meets you at every single family function, and inquires about your marriage while poking fun at you and uttering the words ‘Your Next’. Guess what, the same unfunny relative now takes the form of a popular film from the franchise now. Despite being judged, I have no qualms in admitting that Housefull 1 (2010) and Housefull 2 (2012) are my guilty pleasures, and some of the gags from the films are still laced with my chuckle, a decade and a half later. But over the years, and which is the case with every franchise in the world, the Housefull franchise became a cash cow of sorts, wherein the producers were well aware of having the audience pull despite such mediocre works. So after marring the afterlife in Housefull 4 (2019), the film returns with a ‘Jolly’ Good (?) Mystery that would make Agatha Christie squirm in her grave! I must admit though that the teaser cut of Housefull 5 was promising, given its supposed Brain-Rot comedy that was set against the backdrop of ‘The Death On The Nile’ drama with a serial killer on the loose! Exciting yes, but what followed (twice after) was perhaps my most uncomfortable movie watching experience of 2025!
The best way to describe Housefull 5 is with respect to cricket – a star-studded lineup boasting of the biggest names all in a single team that seems to be super-strong on paper. But come the day, the team is smashed and humbles in a manner that is most embarrassing. But the worst gimmick for the film isn’t the starcast. It is the release of two separate versions namely 5A and 5B just to attract the viewers with different endings, featuring different killers! It is seemingly a technique of multiplying the business but in effect it also multiples the torture that the viewers are subjected to. Like a famous person had said – Extra 2AB Mila Ke Nahi Mila? (Did you get the extra 2AB?). Here the mathematical equation is simple – 2AB=1000Torture (where the viewers are thought to be a big C, but then I digress).
Story & Screenplay
Written by Farhad Samji (no wonder), Tarun Mansukhani and Sajid Naduadwala, the start of Housefull 5 is simple – a character is murdered by a masked killer. The occasion is a cringe-worthy businessman’s (Ranjeet, ayeee) 100th birthday, characters assemble one after the other featuring his board of directors — Bedi (Dino Morea), Shiraz (Shreyas Talpade), Maya (Chitrangada Singh) and Dev (Fardeen Khan) , all with a stake to the throne until Ranjeet is knocked out by death much like most cricketers losing their concentration after scoring a 100. And so the leacherous tone of the drama is extending to a hologram, wherein Ranjeet flirts, evokes cringe before revealing the rightful heir to his business – his mystery second son, Jolly. And this marks the arrival of the Jolly’s in the film – Julius (Akshay Kumar), Jalabuddin (Ritiesh Deshmukh) and Jalbhushan (Abhishek Bachchan).
One of the conflicts of the film along with unmasking the identity of the killer, is also to find out the real Jolly. It is much like determining Teja in Andaz Apna Apna (1994) featuring a mark on his face. But guess what, Housefull 5 is a U/A certified adult comedy that can afford some s*x jokes in the name of humour. So the mark on the face is replaced by a mark on the butt (you read that right). Even each of the ‘foreigner’ girls accompanying Jolly are symbols of casual flirtatious sexism (ofcourse from a male gaze) – Sasikala (Jacqueline Fernandez), Kaanchi (Nargis Fakhri), Zara (Sonam Bajwa). There is also a skimpily dressed lawyer Lucy (Soundarya Sharma) whose sole purpose of being hired (in the film) was to flaunt the anatomy of her body parts. If lusting over female body parts is your thing, Lucy would ensure that the objectification of none of her parts are spared. Men lust, Women play along, and comedy dies an unnatural death!
I literally cringed and then some more during the introductory sequence of all the Jollys, wherein the best actor in the room was a parrot! And because there is no logic expected, you see this parrot called Gucci, reminisce about the death of his father Prada from Housefull 2 against the song from Om Shanti Om (2007). Genuinely funny! But what makes things woefully unbearable are the humans of Housefull 2, who absolutely suck the last piece of breath from the attempted comedy, with such a high tone that drowns in a sea of mediocrity. So the gags include casual girlfriend swaps, a case of temporary amnesia, a bird being hunted like its father, a character pushed into the freezer, a hunt for a character, and a grand entry of a dead body that would put Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible to shame! Let’s laugh together in 3…2…1…..Ready????….(crickets buzzing in the white space)…
What is even lamer than the slapstick, cringe-worthy, adult humour in the first half is the investigation that follows. Featuring two goofy cops that land out of nowhere at the halfway mark namely Bhidu (Sanjay Dutt) and Baba (Jackie Shroff) against the references of their own films Khalnayak (1993) and Hero (1983), including a needless ‘Chhoti Bachchi’ reference from Heropanti (2013) that tried to work on the nostalgia, there is nothing much to adore here. In fact, that is also one of the issues of the film – the nostalgia factor is so forced and disjointed, that none of the recall gags make any sense in this independent universe. The investigation is also so lame that it doesn’t allow you to play the guessing game at any given point, despite the setting that is tailor made for the same! And add to this mess, a Maharashtrian Sherlock Holmes Dhagdu (Nana Patekar), even as bodies start to pile up.
The endings in 5A and 5B (Spoiler-Free):
Now because there are two endings, I will be just reflecting on each of them separately without giving out the killers’ identities. If you come to think of it, the mystery isn’t bad here along with a sense of unpredictability if you choose not to watch the drama closely. The reasons are evident, almost similar in manner but separated by the identities of the killers. Both revelations are decent and to an extent add up (discounting the logic), so should you choose to watch it, either would suffice (maybe 5B is fractionally better)! But because slapstick and brainrot was the flavour of the film, the drama around it is just so cringe. The ‘s*x comedy’ doesn’t end either. You see the character of Julius aims his gun towards Lucy, only for her to raise her hand while her skirt lifts while the men lust over her. In another, Shiraz assaults Lucy while ‘innocently’ mistaking her ‘twins’ for a switch during a blackout. If this is an attempt to gain eyeballs by aiming at the lowest common denominator, then there is nothing more to say! And if you still find this objectification of women funny, then maybe I have actually started to age! I must add that I wasn’t expecting any sort of logic in the first place, but if this is the standard then it is safe to say that comedy was murdered in front of me. And we all are silent witnesses to it!
Dialogues, Music & Direction
The dialogues by Farhad Samji are simply atrocious and unfunny. Even the limited times when my defences gave way, it was at the sheer silliness of the lines which are also cringe-worthy. The latter had my facepalming and behaving like a frustrated Rohit Sharma on the field. Luckily my audi had no ‘stump mics’. The music is the highlight of the film, something that does make me happy because I finally got to listen to some original tracks. The numbers are peppy and provide good relief from the writing atrocities around it. The BGM is also a good attempt to coincide with the tone of the drama, that often switches between a thriller and a comedy. The beats did seem accurate but immensely letdown by the pitch of the performances. The cinematography paints a grandeur as far as the frames are concerned. There is a sufficient amount of attention to the glitz in the narrative, that actually adds glitter to the narrative, even while being superseded by the cringe-worthy sequences that reduce it to a gimmick. Additionally, the framing is ridiculously cringe-worthy when it chooses to focus on the anatomy of a women featuring their body parts, a trait that felt unnecessary and cringe-worthy. The editing is patchy, something that gets increasingly worse as the drama unfolds. And that is when the drama stops making sense!
Director Tarun Mansukhani heavily relies on bouts of adult humour to keep the drama afloat. But there is an art to an adult comedy that mustn’t cross the line in order to be funny. But when you have a character plucking pubic hair from a dead body, or another character pressing the breasts of a woman, or the joke being about the private parts of a woman being an object of lust for men around her. The slapstick humour doesn’t stick too, with characters hanging onto a pole (interpol joke was overdone), or even being subjected to forgetful bouts of humour along the way. The direction goes horribly wrong and doesn’t hit the bullseye even with the nostalgia factor that seemed unnecessary and quite misplaced. And because this is a gags film, the director would invariably be evaluated on these pointers, wherein he doesn’t score.
Performances
The performances are atrocious to the core here. A little snippet of the BTS during its rolling titles told me on how the ‘Not Okay’ takes were a buildup to the ‘Okay’ ones. But even the ‘Okay’ ones were ‘Not Okay’ (my mind is a gutter at the moment, please excuse me). Nikitin Dheer as Sameer and Dino Morea as Bedi are hardly there in the film. Soundarya Sharma as Lucy is cast and exploited to another level by showcasing her body parts in the name of humour. Chunky Panday as Aakhri Pasta and Johny Lever as Batuk are just so wasted here, while being provided with such cringe-worthy lines. Ranjeet as well Ranjeet is playing the onscreen avatar of himself from the 70s, and he does a good job. Shreyas Talpade as Shiraz is the most lusty character that I have seen in celluloid. Not only is he cringe-worthy, he is hardly there otherwise too. Fardeen Khan as Dev is the fittest that he has looked, and he does a decent job. Nana Patekar as Dhugdu is in his elements, in a good job done. Chitrangda Singh as Maya is again wasted and doesn’t have much to do.
Jackie Shroff as Baba and Sanjay Dutt as Bhidu (why did they switch their names? Humour anyway was non-existent) are on the louder side and hence, the comedy doesn’t come through. Nargis Fakhri as Kaanchi, Jacqualine Fernandez as Sasikala (not Shashikala but Sasikala sounds sensuous) and Sonam Bajwa as Zara are literally treated as eye-candy. Abhishek Bachchan as Jalbhushan is over the top and quite forgettable in his act. Riteish Deshmukh as Jalabuddin has his moments to shine but marginally reduced due to the cringe-worthy material provided to him. Alas! It is only upto Akshay Kumar to save the day. But as Julius, this is probably the weakest performance in a comedy role for Akshay. He tries, and tries, and tries but doesn’t always succeed in putting a smile on your face. And that remained the sorry state of the performances that were so mediocre that they couldn’t even rise above the low bar of its writing.
Conclusion
Housefull 5 is the murder of the comedy genre in a franchise that still wishes to cater to the lowest common denominator. Nevermind the murderer, ‘comedy’ was brutally murdered here with the culprit being the ‘writers’. It is cringe-worthy, unfunny and absolutely atrocious in a drama that forced me to consume a paracetamol tablet – TWICE (one for 5A, one for 5B). Available in a theatre near you!