A comedy of errors based on mistaken identities has already shot itself in the foot by having a running time of over 150 minutes! If the writers were so keen on making an ensemble cast movie with 12 principal characters then they might have learnt a thing of two from Ocean’s 12, crisp at 125 minutes.

But then the producer (Sajid Nadiadwala) and director (Sajid Khan) were riding high on the undeserved success of Housefull so here they are attempting to be bigger and, maybe, just slightly better. There are still racist digs at black people and jokes made at the expense of short people. Farhad-Sajid’s dialogues lean on rhyming jokes and puns, which gets tiresome after some time.

So what is Housefull 2 about? Its about four men all of who claim to be Jolly, the son of a wealthy UK businessman called JD (Mithun Chakraborty). But JD has only one son played by Ritesh Deshmukh. This real Jolly is petrified of his father and unable to tell him about the woman he loves, JLo (Zarine Khan). Jolly’s friend Jai is enraged and wants to hurt Chintoo Kapoor (Rishi Kapoor) whose insults have landed Jai’s father in ICU. So Jai borrows Jolly’s identity and loans it to Max, a small time crook, who poses as Jolly, a rich suitor for Chintoo’s daughter. But a case of mistaken identity lands Max in Chintoo’s rival half-brother Daboo’s (Randhir Kapoor) house. Daboo believes Max is JD’s son and immediately fixes Jolly’s engagement with his daughter Bobby (Jacqueline Fernandez). Now in order to dupe the right Kapoor, Jai gets another good-for-nothing friend Sunny to pose as Jolly and win over Heena’s (Asin) heart. Chintoo is delighted that JD’s son will be his son in law.

In the meanwhile Jai is in love with his assistant Parul (Shazahn Padamsee) and at some point, in order to keep up this complicated ruse, even he becomes Jolly. In the midst of all of this, the real Jolly gets stuck when all the prospective brides, their fathers and the three other Jollys show up at JD’s palatial estate. At some point there is a return of Aakhri Pasta (Chunky Pandey) and Boman Irani appears halfway as JD’s best friend Batuk Patel whose daughter was promised to Jolly.

Even as the plot gets more and more messy, there are a few well done scenes, besides the Papa toh band bajaye song, the scene with the crocodile and python is amusing; there is a great gag about Jolly having had bodyguard experience when he was assigned to the President – the President of Lions Club Bhandup. But these are few and far between in a film that otherwise runs out of steam right in the middle and fails to find its rhythm thereafter.

 

Shoddy acting by most of the cast does not help. And Akshay Kumar’s Ranjeet impression is just creepy. The four male leads and their female counterparts have zero chemistry. But then, what does it matter? Nadiadwala and Khan have probably already started work on Housefull 3.

Rating: *1/2