Bollywood loves to milk any conceivable cow for all its worth. 'Agar picture chalti hai, to chalo, aur banao!' seems to be their mantra. But there are instances when there's only so much you can milk the cow before it runs dry, and the Housefull franchise seems to be one of those instances.

The trailer for Housefull 3 (yes, the third installment of the franchise folks) dropped earlier this week. Featuring Akshay Kumar, Abhishek Bachchan, Riteish Deshmukh, Boman Irani, Jackie Shroff, Jacqueline Fernandez, Lisa Haydon and Nargis Fakhri, the trailer is supposedly a comedy. I say ‘supposedly’ because the trailer shows it as anything but – full of unfunny jokes, irritating sound effects (for enhancing the punchlines), hammy gags and promises of double entendre humour which I can just imagine myself cringing to while watching.

The plot appears to revolve around the three heroes being the boyfriends of the three heroines (who are all the daughters of Boman Irani's character) who pretend to have physical disabilities in order to get into Boman’s good graces so that they can marry their daughters (with Boman not wanting to marry off his daughters). The rest of the trailer is made up of various gags which frankly fail to fire. Their shenanigans are interrupted by the entry of Jackie Shroff, playing what appears to be a gangster out to recover a loan of 5000 crores (yes, 5000 crores lol).

True to the theme of the Housefull series, the action is set in a massive mansion in the United Kingdom and again being true to theme, features characters being imposters. It’s hard to believe that reigning queen Deepika Padukone once starred in the first ever Housefull considering the heroines in this franchise never really have much to do (which only goes to show you how far she’s come, but that’s another article!). Of the trio of actresses, Jacqueline seems to have the strongest role, with Akshay probably getting the strongest role out of the three actors.

There are so many questions I have about this film. Why proceed with a third installment of this film without the director of the first two, Sajid Khan? What are Akshay Kumar, Abhishek Bachchan and Ritiesh Deshmukh doing in this film when they are capable of so so much more? Why does Bollywood insist on casting foreign actresses who labour to speak Hindi (for the record, Jacqueline has the best diction out of all the three actresses!) Was there a test audience for the jokes in the film when the film was being written (because it definitely doesn’t seem like it!)? Why does this movie just look so darned unfunny?

Honestly speaking, I think this franchise has jumped the shark (if you don’t know what that means, Google it, my friend) and needs to die a timely death. However, I can see already foresee a Housefull 4 in the future if Housefull 3 hits that coveted 100cr mark at the BO (which it is likely to do because films like this are mindless fluff that desi audiences in mass centres tend to absorb). Till then, you can check out the trailer below or at the movies on 3 June... I for one am likely to give it a miss!

Are you looking forward to Housefull 3?