Tees Maar Khan Movie Review: Watch at Your Own Risk!

Tees Maar Khan was one of the most anticipated films in the year. Promos had been flooding the screen for many days and there were innumerable conversations about who was better – Sheila or Munni. Every aspiring dancer wanted to match Katrina Kaif at her ultimate sensuous best. There was also the anticipation of watching a Farah Khan film. She had given us hits such as Om Shanti Om and Main Hoon Na and we were hoping that she would recreate the box office acclaim of her previous films.

Tees Maar Khan Movie Review

The film is based on the Peter Seller’s classic “After The Fox“, and even though I did not see any credit given to the original screenplay in the film, the resemblance was very obvious in many places. It is always difficult to match the brilliance of Peter Seller’s films and unfortunately this film is one of the many which have tried and failed.

The Story:

The name itself is the main story. Tabrez Khan, better known as Tees Maar Khan undertakes to rob a train of it’s major loot, but with the help of an entire village. The unsuspecting villagers believe that they are taking part in the film about a train robbery, and of course this being a Bollywood film, none of them seem to have the intelligence to realise that they are being conned into an actual heist. A good enough story –  it had all the makings of being slapstick comedy and a masala Bollywood film rolled into one. But halfway down the film you begin to lose interest and the story meanders around touching various subjects such as the Oscars and Bollywood aspirations without being able to carry anyone of them to their logical conclusion.

A slapstick comedy like any other story requires a taut storyline with logical sequences and some semblance to reality. These have to be accompanied by excellent dialogue and a great sense of comedy timing. The film fails on all these account since a long winded meandering tale with convolutions and complications galore supported by bad conversations do not make a great film. Dialogues written by Shirish and Asmith Kunder fail to provide the spark needed to light up a mediocre script.

The Performers:

Akshay Kumar has always been a saleable star and also one of the best comedians among the top rung of Bollywood actors.  He has often carried an entire film on his shoulders but somehow in TMK he disappoints us. Even though he is a natural for this role, but we are left asking for more.  Even in his Khiladi series he did a better job as a conman, and somehow we expected Farah Khan to be able to get the best out of this highly underrated actor.

Katrina Kaif  titillates with her gyrations and her lovely long legs, but there is very little acting on her part. She does play the role of a bimbette but even that is fairly badly done.. Her conversations all seem to consist of little more than screeching at very high pitched decibel levels, and except for her great dance for Sheila Ki Jawani she is has added very little to the very few charms of the film.

The gem of the film however will always be Akshay Khanna who plays the role of a bad actor so well that you begin to forget that he is in reality a very good actor. His hamming and his spoofs of Bollywood are probably the best part of the film. Even he has not been provided the support of good dialogues, but he manages to overcome that obstacle with elan.

The rest of the cast only seems to be screaming their way through the film, since that seems to have been the norm for all dialogues!

Download the latest music album and your favorite Sheila Ki Jaawani.

Direction & Music:

Sheila Ki Jawani is the only song in the family which has caught the fancy of the cine-going public, it may be due to the amazing item girl performance from Katrina more than anything else.  The rest of the music can at best be called passable and is likely to fade from public memory very soon.

Farah Khan has given us spectacular hits such as Om Shanti Om, and we always felt that she had her finger on the pulse of the audience. Masala movies were her forte, but here she seems to have entered into the realm of slapstick comedy and lost her way while doing so. She had established herself as a filmmaker who a great sense of humor and an ability to provide a fun filled evening for her viewers. But in this film she has too many characters, too many slapstick scenarios and screaming performers and none of them seem to gel. We miss her ability to charm us and make us believe in totally far-fetched stories as in Om Shanti Om, or in giving us the revelry and light-heartedness of a college atmosphere as the backdrop of a military story.

Poor dialogues and an implausible storyline, performed in an average manner by two of Bollywood’s most talented performers, have all combined together to make us give this film a thumbs down.