Hate Story 3 review: Barring Sharman Joshi, no one seems to be even trying to act in this farce

Watching this faux pas disguised as a film, one was reminded of Amrish Puri in Rakesh Roshan’s Koyla, who kept threatening his screen wife Madhuri Dixit with rough sex, but would start snoring the minute he hit the bed. The four characters in this foreplay of a film are caught in exactly the same compromising position. Except that they don’t snore. But we do. [caption id=“attachment_2533202” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  A still from Hate Story 3. Image from Youtube.[/caption] Hate Story 3 is a huge homage to the spirit of coitus interruptus. It promises sex. If you’ve been watching the lustful trailers and teasers and listening to the quartet of wannabes hold forth on sex, lust and other related matters, you’d be well within your rights to expect a kind of heightened Murder or a heated up Raaz, with much skin and sex. Skin, there is plenty of. Zarine Khan’s ample cleavage does all the acting in this film, which is about a fornicating foursome that never quite gets down to being the sex romp that it promises to be. The soundtrack is filled with mating noises. But the loins are clearly not in tandem with the requirements of the cheesy plot. Like a clumsy virgin-boy doing it for the first time, the narrative moves forward in spasmodic jerks. There is no attempt to give the characters even a semblance of rationale. One is at a loss to decide who is more driven by impulse and greed: the sly characters(they all talk with only their eyes) or the writer of this cheesy franchise. Barring Sharman Joshi (who wears a pained what-am-I-doing-in-this-film look throughout) the other actors don’t even make an effort to act. They let their upper torsos do the emoting while the songs (for a film about mating games there are too many song breaks) and the breathy rasping background score remind us that everyone is in it for moaning…er, money. The plot is a nervy backhanded tribute to Adrian Lyne’s much-copied 1993 erotic thriller Indecent Proposal. If you can bear Karan Singh Grover as Robert Redford’s neo-avatar, then you’re most welcome to try out Hate Story 3. But if you don’t get impressed by the sighs of the thighs then try Angry Indian Goddesses for another kind of music of the senses. Here is every Indian’s ultimate tolerance test: Sit through this film. I dare you.