Tees Maar Khan review *spoilers*

The Tale of a Conman and his Wife

You know you're in for an erm... experience when you see Shirish Kunder putting himself in the credits six times. He exceeds Midget Khan levels, who has a habit of focusing on a giant "A" for as long as other movies would finish their entire credit sequences in. His gall is so jaw dropping his credit as "music director" comes before the one for Vishal Shekhar!

The film soon begins with in vitro animations of a dancing baby (pole dancing, no less) quite obviously stolen from the famous "dancing baby" of the 90s.  Born to be a conman (modeled on Mr. Farah Khan himself?) he will grow up to be Akshay Kumar aka Tees Maar Khan.

A hamming police chief comes on to talk about gazillions of rupees worth of loot being taken to Delhi by train which they expected to be stolen by Siamese twins, the Johri brothers. Kunder doesn't seem to have learned after the Anupam Kher dwarf fiasco in Jaan-E-Maan that just putting the differently-abled on screen doesn't make it instantly hilarious.

The Johri brothers would need the help of other crooks among whom is someone named Ismail Koyla.  Witness the supposed hilarity in the script that took four years to write: "It's hard to tell if Ismail is blacker than koyla or if koyla is blacker than Ismail!" The poor jokes keep coming among which is how Ismail's weapon is the "black of night." Har har.


Another possible crook to assist the Johri brothers is our very own Tees Maar Khan and Akki makes his first appearance on screen as he escapes from a moving airplane.  This might have been the time to include a thrilling action sequence but the audience sees zilch except Akki prancing like a male model through the airplane aisles AFTER the supposed escape has already occurred, which we also don't see except for an absurd scene of Akki trying to bite the hands of his captors.  There are Saturday morning cartoons made for 5 year olds that show more inventiveness than this.

After escape, Akki heads to see his mother and trashy girlfriend Katrina Kaif, aka Anya (named after Farah's own daughter), who bursts onto the scene with the item number Shiela Ki Jawani.  Here too, Farah Khan takes the easy way out and part of the song is very familiar in style, setting and even dress to old Juhi/SRK number Osaka Muraiya from 1 2 ka 4.

When the police come to his house, his mode of escape is putting on a turban and dressing as a villager to avoid being noticed.  Woo, what a great criminal mastermind we are dealing with here.  Why the Siamese twins want this fool to steal millions worth of treasure from a high security train is inexplicable. His grand plan to steal the loot is to pose as a director and make a movie with an Oscar grubbing film star, played extremely annoyingly by Akshaye Khanna, in a village in which the train will pass through. Once done with this brain-taxing exercise, he decides it's time to dance to a qawwali and it's also time for a nonsensical star cameo by Salman Khan who comes to dance with Akki and Kat and in Farah and Shirish's dreams also hopefully irritate Shah Rukh Khan.

The film within a film puts Farah back on the territory she knows best but unfortunately she isn't able to mine any comedy from it unlike with Om Shanti Om.  Lame jokes like Day Ho (off Jai Ho) and Manoj Day Ramalan (a take off on Manoj Night Shymalan) and a spoof on Rang De Basanti are peppered throughout but none of them bring even a smile, never mind the laughs a comedy is supposed to.  You'd be better off watching the last Akshay flop Action Replay and that's saying something.  I'm hoping someone snips out all the 8-9 minutes of Katrina Kaif and puts them together in a youtube video.  Let it rake in 50 million views and save yourself from this torture.

Even watching on PDVD and skipping crappy scenes, it is not worth your time.  Someone please get ready to file a class action suit against the Kunders for cruel and unusual punishment.  Next, a criminal case for pulling the greatest con job of all - stealing the money of millions of people and financing their production house through zero talent or hard work.  A script and idea stolen from After the Fox, cheap sets and low caliber performers to save money which can then be immediately be deposited into their back account, and a job for the otherwise rightfully unemployed Shirish Kunder.  The ending credits come with a song called "Happy Ending" where the shamefully unashamed cast and crew pose for the camera and yes, Shirish Kunder struts out six times.  Happy ending, indeed.