Zero Stars (out of 4)

Buy the DVD at Amazon
Buy the soundtrack at iTunes

Kyaa Kool Hain Hum 3 (“How Cool Are We 3“) is so stupid that it seems easy to dismiss. However, the film is built on offensive racial stereotypes, so it can’t be let off the hook no matter how moronic it is.

The plot of Kyaa Kool Hain Hum 3 (KKHH3, henceforth) follows the exploits of two good-for-nothing guys — innocent Kanhaiya (Tusshar Kapoor) and his horny friend, Rocky (Aftab Shivdasani) — who wind up working as porn stars in Thailand. When Kanhaiya falls for Shaalu (Mandana Karimi), a woman outside of the industry, the porn crew has to pretend to be a traditional Indian family in order to win over Shaalu’s conservative father (played by Darshan Jariwala).

Being that this is a mainstream Hindi movie, pornography is hinted at rather than shown. There’s no nudity, and sex is depicted as two people dancing together in skimpy clothing. The crew specializes in dirty versions of popular Bollywood movies, so familiarity with Hindi films is a prerequisite (though the crew’s remake of Khoobsurat as Boobsurat is self-explanatory).

Almost nothing in KKHH3 is particularly funny. Jokes mostly consist of dirty puns and obvious sex references, such as the guys celebrating Kanhaiya’s grandmother’s 69th birthday. There are tons of Hindi wordplay jokes that don’t translate into English.

The juvenile humor frequently comes at the expense of gay men and people with speech impediments. Kanhaiya also has an unfunny condition in which his eyes cross when he sees the color red.

Yet the greatest offenses are aimed at women, particularly Western women. KKHH3 opens with a tour of Rocky’s mansion. Four naked white women sleep in four different beds, presumably having each had sex with Rocky the night before. When the guys imagine Thailand, they picture a dance sequence featuring a dozen bikini-clad blondes, not Thai women.

The two porn actresses are played by Claudia Ciesla, who is Polish-German, and blue-eyed Gizele Thakral. Karimi herself is of Indian-Iranian heritage, which gives her character leeway to dance in a bikini and make sexual overtures to Kanhaiya (who politely demurs, since they aren’t yet married). Two of the other three explicitly Indian female characters who act sexually are drugged with aphrodisiacs when they do so.

The implication is clear: “good Indian girls” don’t voluntarily do the kind of naughty stuff that slutty Westernized women do. Can we get past this harmful stereotype already? If you’re not willing to even consider casting an Indian actor in a role, then maybe that role shouldn’t exist.

KKHH3‘s one redeeming feature is that the music video for the song “Expectation” by the excellent K-pop band Girl’s Day plays in the background of a scene set in a movie store. Just watch the music video below and give Kyaa Kool Hain Hum 3 a miss.

Links

• Kyaa Kool Hain Hum 3 at Wikipedia
• Kyaa Kool Hain Hum 3 at IMDb
• Buy “Expectation” by Girl’s Day at iTunes