There are franchises that age like fine wine, and then there is the Masti series, which now feels like the leftover soda at the bottom of a plastic cup after the party is over. Mastiii 4, directed by Milap Milan Zaveri and fronted again by Riteish Deshmukh, Vivek Oberoi and Aftab Shivdasani, brings the gang back nearly a decade after Great Grand Masti crashed and burned.
The film is positioned as a big revival of the adult comedy brand, backed by Zee Studios and mounted as a glossy, ensemble driven entertainer with an A certificate and a runtime of about 2 hours 20 minutes.
On paper, the package sounds crowd friendly. You have the original trio, a bigger cast that now includes Arshad Warsi, Tusshar Kapoor, Nargis Fakhri, Elnaaz Norouzi, Ruhi Singh and Shreya Sharma, all thrown into a high energy, “no rules” sex comedy that promises chaos, puns and nostalgia for fans of the first two films. 
On screen though, Mastiii 4 is less a movie and more an endurance test. The humour rarely rises above WhatsApp uncle forwards, the writing treats women as punchlines or props, and the gags feel aggressively dated in 2025. The franchise that once flirted with outrageousness now feels exhausted, cynical and weirdly joyless. A film that wants to be a wild party ends up looking like a desperate reunion where everyone is trying too hard and nobody is having any fun, least of all the audience.
Mastiii 4: Plot
The basic template stays loyal to the franchise. Once again we follow Amar, Meet and Prem, played by Riteish Deshmukh, Vivek Oberoi and Aftab Shivdasani. They are now based in the United Kingdom, stuck in comfortable but suffocating marriages and craving the thrill of their long lost bachelor days. 
Amar is married to Bindiya, played by Elnaaz Norouzi, who is written as an overly charitable social media obsessed wife whose generosity constantly empties his wallet and patience. Meet is paired with Aanchal, played by Shreya Sharma, a hyper suspicious partner who tracks his movements and even his health through apps and tech. Prem’s marriage to Geeta, played by Ruhi Singh, is painted as another variation of the “no time, no intimacy, only responsibilities” equation. Together the three men represent a tired idea of marriage as punishment, a theme the franchise has hammered since 2004. 
Frustrated, the trio cook up a new “master plan” to escape their mundane lives. Their dream of liberation revolves around a half baked scheme that involves fake romance, secret trips and a promise of guilt free fun away from their wives. Of course this is a Masti film, so things escalate into a domino of disasters that brings in Arshad Warsi’s character Kamraj, Tusshar Kapoor’s Don Pablo and a string of supporting players including Nargis Fakhri, Shaad Randhawa and Nishant Malkani. 
What is supposed to be a comic roller coaster of mistaken identities, blackmail, crime and extramarital confusion slowly mutates into a loud blur of shouting matches, double meaning dialogues and slapstick confrontations. The one mildly fresh idea, that the wives have their own secrets and are not entirely naïve victims, was teased in pre release reports as a “reverse Masti” angle where women also get a share of the extramarital chaos.  In the final film, this track barely rises above token twists. It is used more as ammunition for one upmanship than as actual commentary, which leaves the narrative feeling both spineless and strangely mean spirited.
By the time the climax tries to tie up all the lies, misunderstandings and schemes in a sentimental bow about love, trust and marriage, you are less interested in who ends up with whom and more interested in when the end credits will finally appear.
Mastiii 4: Performance
If there is any reason the film is barely watchable in stretches, it is because the original trio are seasoned enough to know how to sell bad material with sheer familiarity. Riteish Deshmukh leans on his tried and tested comic beats, alternating between exasperated husband and frantic schemer. His timing is still sharp, but the script gives him very little that is genuinely funny, so most of his scenes feel like reheated leftovers from Masti and Grand Masti. 
Vivek Oberoi plays Meet with a self aware smugness that occasionally turns into unintentional parody. You can see flashes of the easy charm he once brought to lighter roles, yet here it is buried under an endless barrage of laboured punchlines and reaction shots. Aftab Shivdasani, always the most underrated of the trio, looks the most stranded. He throws himself into the physical comedy, gets slapped, chased and humiliated on cue, but the film rarely rewards his effort with a payoff that lands.
Among the extended cast, Arshad Warsi and Tusshar Kapoor are perhaps the biggest disappointments. Both have an impressive track record when it comes to comedy, yet in Mastiii 4 they are reduced to loud caricatures, screaming their lines instead of playing with timing or rhythm. Their presence hints at the potential for genuinely clever ensemble chaos, but the writing never allows them a proper arc. 
The women, once again, are written as accessories rather than characters. Elnaaz Norouzi, Ruhi Singh and Shreya Sharma do what they can within the limited framework of “annoying”, “clingy” or “over controlling” wives.  They look glamorous, they hold the frame, yet the film is uninterested in giving them interiority or even strong punchlines of their own. Nargis Fakhri glides in as the designated fantasy figure, but her track feels like an extended item gag stitched into the narrative.
It is not that the performances are lazy. The cast is clearly game and throwing energy at every scene. The problem is that they are working in a vacuum, surrounded by humour that relies entirely on volume, innuendo and repetition. Even a committed actor can only do so much when every joke has the same setup and the same payoff.
Mastiii 4: Analysis
From the opening minutes it is clear that Mastiii 4 is not interested in evolving the franchise, only in inflating it. The budget is higher, the cast is bigger, the sets are slicker, the UK locations are picturesque, yet the core sensibility remains stuck in a time capsule from the early 2000s.
Milap Milan Zaveri’s direction doubles down on the loudest choices. Every emotion is underlined by background score, every joke is accompanied by reaction shots and sound effects, and every scene is stretched far beyond its natural lifespan in the hope that sheer excess will create laughter. Instead what we get is a film that confuses noise with energy. The camera is constantly moving, the actors are constantly shouting, yet the humour remains stubbornly flat.
The writing is where the film truly collapses. At a conceptual level, there was an opportunity to play with the idea of “reverse Masti”, to examine the hypocrisy of men who glorify their own cheating while falling apart when their wives exhibit even a hint of autonomy. Reports before release hinted that the wives would be central to the chaos, that this time both sides would be equally guilty.  On screen, that promise is reduced to a few twists and a hurried moral lecture about trust, which feels dishonest after two plus hours of regressive jokes.
The humour itself is aggressively lazy. There are body shaming gags, tired wordplay around English Hindi phrases, and sexual innuendo that would have felt juvenile even in the DVD era. Several lines and visuals reportedly attracted attention from the Central Board of Film Certification, which chopped intimate moments and forced changes in certain objectionable expressions before giving the film an Adults Only certificate.  Ironically, the cuts do not make the film more palatable. They just expose how heavily it depends on shock value instead of wit.
From a gender lens, Mastiii 4 is exhausting. The wives are either shrill, controlling, manipulative or conveniently forgiving once the script demands a resolution. The men are glorified for their “boys will be boys” antics and then instantly redeemed with a token apology. The film keeps flirting with the possibility of satirising its own worldview, yet it always retreats to the safest, most adolescent position.
Even the pacing is off. At 134 minutes for the theatrical version, the film drags relentlessly, cycling through the same kind of set pieces: misunderstandings in hotel rooms, slapstick chases, accidental double entendres in front of elders or authority figures. There is no sense of escalation, no clever stacking of gags. It is just more of the same, louder each time, until fatigue sets in.
For fans of the original Masti, which at least tried to blend a thriller plot with sex comedy, this fourth instalment feels like a parody of a parody. The brand has eaten itself.
Mastiii 4: Verdict
Mastiii 4 arrives with the promise of four times the fun and mischief, but delivers mostly cringe and second hand embarrassment. As an adult comedy it is neither bold nor inventive. As a nostalgia trip it only reminds you how far the franchise has fallen. As a theatrical experience it feels strangely small, like a web sketch artificially stretched into a feature film.
Riteish Deshmukh, Vivek Oberoi and Aftab Shivdasani still share an easy camaraderie, and there are a couple of fleeting moments when that old spark peeks through, usually in throwaway reactions rather than in the big punchlines the film is so proud of. The rest is a slog, a barrage of recycled jokes, tired tropes and regressive ideas dressed up as “harmless fun”.
On a five star scale, Mastiii 4 scrapes a 0.5 out of 5. That half star is purely for the cast’s effort and for the faint memory of what this franchise once was. Everyone else involved needs to retire this brand, lock the word “Masti” in a safe for a few years and ask a difficult question: in 2025, do audiences really need another film that mistakes humiliation and innuendo for humour.
Mastiii 4: Rating
Critics Rating: 0.5/5
Box Office Rating: 1/5
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