Cinemaah

This is one series that should have stopped at the first—and best—film. With a Part 3 of Saheb Biwi Aur Gangster, director and co-writer Tigmanshu Dhulia overestimates the interest of the audience in a bunch of erstwhile royals, willing to plunge to any depths to hold on to their wealth and power.

The Saheb, Aditya Pratap Singh (Jimmy Shergil) and Biwi, Madhvi (Mahie Gill) remain the same in all three films, the gangster changes from Randeep Hooda to Irrfan Khan to Sanjay Dutt.

This film picks up from where the second part had left off, Saheb is in jail, and Madhavi, now used to her political clout, wants to keep him inside, and his second wife (Soha Ali Khan) supplied with drink to keep her quiet.  Madhavi is a promiscuous and nasty piece of work, who tells her somewhat defanged husband that she got a taste of evil from the rajwada (palace).

Meanwhile, Uday (Sanjay Dutt), who actually made a fortune playing Russian Roulette with drunk idots—he has a “He’s The Baba” soundtrack to announce his arrival-- is ruling over a strip club called House Of Lords in London, because a scandal back home sent him packing. His uncle (Kabir Bedi) and cousin Vijay (Deepak Tijori) run a palace hotel, while his sweetheart Suhani (Chitrangda Singh) coos to him over video chats.

Then Aditya wrangles his way out of jail, Uday is deported after he bashes a white man for being rude, and the power struggles intensify in fictional Devgarh. Only this time round, the script is incoherent, the claws are clipped and the characters as menacing as the animal heads mounted on tacky palace walls.

Out of the lot of bored actors, only Jimmy Shergill looks like he has some stake in the proceedings. Astonishingly, so besotted is Dhulia with his depraved former royals that he has ended the film with scope for a Part 4. Time to beg him to cease and desist!