TEES MAAR KHAN

Tees Maar Khan is a Bollywood movie directed by Farah Khan and starring Akshay Kumar.  It's about a con man who pretends to make a movie as part of an elaborate ruse to rob a train... or something.  Along the way there are headless ghosts, marijuana farms with child labor, conjoined twins, and a (sort-of) plane hijacking.  Oh, and did I mention that Tees Maar Khan is a slapstick comedy?


Buckle up.  It just gets weirder from here...

I love Farah Khan, but she has lost her mind with this movie.  Humor is subjective, and to a certain extent culturally dependent.  I get that.  That said, here is a partial list of things from the first five minutes of Tees Maar Khan that will never be funny, anywhere on Earth:

1. Creepy CGI babies doing Weird Stuff in utero.
2. Akshay Kumar wearing way too much eyeliner for no discernable reason.
3. The following dialog: "They call him half-Robin Hood.  He robs from the rich and doesn't give it to the poor."


Probably not.

Self-referential industry humor is becoming something of a trademark of Farah Khan films and she has used it to great effect in her other two movies.  Om Shanti Om, for instance, has a ton of this type of humor.  Unfortunately, that doesn't work here, because all it does is remind you that the movie you're watching isn't as good as the ones referred to.  Especially notable--and not in a good way--are a few rather catty jokes about Shahrukh Khan, the star of her previous two films.  With a work the quality of Tees Maar Khan, Farah Khan can ill afford to be distancing herself from the most popular actor in Bollywood.  One bit, however, makes for one of the very few kinda-funny sight gags in the film: the plane on which Akshay's con man is being transported has "Con Air" emblazoned on it.


The movie I'd rather be watching.

And the music... oy.  Farah Khan is a respected choreographer so one at the very least expects her item numbers to be non-painful.  But in Tees Maar Khan we don't even get that bonus.  The music is repetitive, the numbers are oddly distributed (three random ones near the beginning of the movie and then none until the 90 minute mark), they cut off in strange places, and when they do appear you kind of wish they didn't because they're just not fun to watch.  Again, I must contrast this to the other two films she has directed, Main Hoon Na and Om Shanti Om, which both have excellent and appropriate musical numbers.  They are much missed in the flimsy Tees Maar Khan.


Don't tell anyone, Katrina!  Maybe they won't notice you're in the movie.

One genuinely amusing part of the movie comes near the end, when the "film" that Akshay and his gang shot is premiered in all its incompetently shot glory with insane camera angles, complete lack of plot, terrible singing, and incomprehensible dialog.  Someone in the audience stands up and proclaims it a "French art film" and everyone cheers.  A cliched joke, yes, but a lot funnier in context than it sounds written out here.

Overall, unless you're a hardcore Akshay Kumar fan, you can probably skip Tees Maar Khan.  Poor Katrina Kaif, already unfairly maligned in Bollywood, is not going to get any love for her completely useless role in this movie.  Every director has misses, so hopefully Farah Khan's next will be better.  She'd do best to make another hit quickly and let this one be forgotten.

My career suggestion for Farah Khan.