You don't need to have seen the previous Housefull movies to watch Housefull 4. The Housefull franchise is more like an anthology series of incredibly broad comedies which feature much of the same cast playing completely different characters in completely different situations. There are a lot of these franchises in Bollywood, and they all have big name casts and make a whole lot of money.
Harry (Akshay Kumar) is a barber living in London with his brothers Roy (Riteish Deshmukh) and Max (Bobby Deol). Harry has a short-term memory disorder which causes him to forget what's happening whenever he's distracted by a loud noise. (This is played for laughs because it's that sort of movie.) Harry's memory problems have already landed the boys in trouble; he accidentally destroyed five million pounds belonging to unseen gangster Michael Bhai, and Michael would really, really like his money back.
Luckily, the brothers are dating Pooja (Pooja Hegde), Neha (Kriti Kharbanda), and Kriti (Kriti Sanon), the daughters of business tycoon Thakral (Ranjeet), and they hope that after their respective weddings they'll be more than able to settle the debt. At first Thakral is unimpressed by the middle-aged losers trying to marry his daughters, but after an incident involving escaped horses and some suspiciously out-of-character heroics from the mild-mannered Harry, he's happy to accept them. After spinning the family globe, the family sets off for Sitamgarh to hold the wedding.
And that's when things start to get really weird. Upon seeing the huge castle where the wedding is to take place, Harry starts to get flashes of memory. One of the bellhops, an offensive Italian stereotype named (ugh) Aakhri Pasta (Chunkey Pandey) claims to recognize the entire wedding party, though he's quickly fired and sent away by stuffy hotel manager Winston Churchgate (Johnny Lever). After more flashes of memory, Harry sets out to find Pasta, and has his first proper flashback.
Six hundred years ago, Harry was Prince Bala Dev Singh, a bald, mustachioed spider-biting scoundrel. After Bala is exiled form his own kingdom, his servant Pehla Pasta produces an invitation to the birthday celebration of Maharaja Surya Singh, who just happens to have three daughters of marriageable age. Bala schemes to marry Madhu, the oldest daughter, and he teams up with effeminate dance teacher Bangdu and valorous and kind of dumb royal bodyguard Dharamputra Mahabali, who have their eyes on younger sisters Mala and Meena. Unfortunately, Suryabhan (Sharad Kelkar) has a scheme to take the throne, and he uses unstoppable barbarian warlord Gama (Ranna Daggubati) as a weapon. In the climactic battle, everybody dies.
Harry realizes the truth: he was Bala, Roy was Bangdu and Max was Dharamputra, while Kriti, Pooja and Neha were Madhu, Mala and Meena, respectively, which means the brothers are all about to marry the wrong sisters. Harry has to make everybody else remember their past lives before the wedding, and the situation becomes even more complicated when wedding singer pappu Rangeela arrives, since he is the reincarnation of Gama and they definitely do not want him recovering his lost memories.
Housefull 4 is a really dumb movie with a great cast. The humor is incredibly broad, consistently crude, and occasionally funny (the running gag about Harry getting repeatedly stabbed in the backside is a lot better than it sounds), but the less said about the subplot about Winston realizing he's the reincarnation of past-Pasta's love interest Giggly (Jamie Lever, Johnny's actual daughter), the better.
I can't help but feel that there's some wasted potential here. Bala, the mustache-twirling villain who stumbles backwards into the role of romantic hero and discovers that he's really good at it, is an interesting character. You could make a good movie about him. Or you could make this one, I guess.
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