First, a brief backgrounder: In Indian folktales, there once lived Mister Tees-Maar Khan who'd gas about being a strong and brave fellow, but squishing 30 mosquitoes was all he ever did. Thence, Tees-Maar Khan. In our folktales there also lived Mister Koop-Mandook. If you paid attention in your Sanskrit class, you’ll recall that this little dad-du was born and brought up in a well (koop). His worldview began at the round stone wall, frolicked about in the water with other happy little koop-mandooks, and ended at the small, round piece of blue sky.

In 2010 or thereabouts, one Bollywood Koop-Mandook, Shirish Kunder, woke up in the morning, did some trrr-trrr to his wife Farah Khan and she, just having delivered three cuties, trrr-ed back to him, which he took as a “yes” and hopped around his koop. You see, some angry soul had flung a DVD of the 1966 Peter Sellers’ flop film After the Fox in his little koop. And Mr Kunder had watched it, stolen its story idea, looked around his little Bollywood koop and desified the screenplay and now, after the conjugal trrr-ing, began shooting it. The end result, Tees Maar Khan, I can testify, is not so much a film as a harebrained idea.

WE FIRST meet Tabrez Mirza Khan nee Tees Maar Khan floating about in his mother’s womb. Mother watches chor-police films, and from inside her stomach the boy too watches these films, loses his morals and acquires chori-chakari skills. His first haath ki safai victim is the doctor who delivers him. This Tees Maar Khan is unlike the folktales guy. He is the key to all locks. There is no jail he can’t break out of, no cop he can’t fool, no human being he can’t con... So T.M. Khan grows up to be a wanted criminal with three flunkies — Burger, Dollar and Soda who chant his praises and wear clothes that flaunt his smirking face.
T.M. Khan is arrested, but he cons two gay cops and escapes using the power of a hairpin. On landing in Mumbai, he goes straight to meet girlfriend Anya (Katrina Kaif) who has acting ka bhoot and is the lead in Sheila ki jawani. He arrives on the sets where she is shaking her booty and boobs. T.M. Khan grabs her and takes her home.
Mumbai police, meanwhile, is working on transporting 10,000 kg of national treasure to Delhi by train. These antiques, recovered from the chipke-hue judwa bhai smugglers, Johri Brothers (Raghu Ram and Rajiv Laxman), are worth Rs 500 crore. Only three criminals can steal it, but since two are in jail, the cops need to worry only about T.M. Khan.
The joined-at-the-hip Johri Brothers ask T.M. Khan to steal back their maal. He says, sure, spots Bollywood star Atish Kapoor (Akshaye Khanna), learns about his Oscar obsession and devices a plan that involves him posing as Hollywood director Manoj Day Ramalan (the fair brother of Manoj Night Ramalan) who is shooting a film called Bharat ka Khazana in Dhulia village. The rest of TMK’s plot involves Atish mincing Danny Boyle’s Jai Ho! to Day Ho!, his sceptical secretary Bunty Baweja (Sudhir Pandey) shouting “pencho”, Anya screaming “You dirty dog”, one leucoderma patient posing as a British soldier, some warm-hearted, some effeminate village men, and the train laden with khazana.
Tees Maar Khan’s main story about a super-criminal rests on the premise that there is not a single living brain cell in a 100-km radius around where T.M. Khan lives and operates. That’s why perhaps the film never seems convinced of itself — neither its story, nor its characters. No one cares about anyone, there are no relationships, no bonds, neither of love nor of loathing. So to engage us, TMK relies on comedy. But TMK is so nervous about not being funny that it crams every name, scene, character and dialogue with some sort of ha-ha joke, and when it doesn’t know what to do it makes people stick their fingers up their noses. At the end what we get is a weary parody of Bollywood clichés and some sexist chants.
The only thing TMK is serious about is disgracing certain Bollywood stars and their obsessive ways. Only some bits of this are funny because TMK mostly treats you and me as jerks who would be delighted to spend Rs 300 (ya, at PVR, first day, first show) just to listen to Bollywood in-jokes about Aamir Khan and his Oscar dreams, about Salman-Katrina-Akshay etc. The bitching that the TMK gang indulges in about “the other Bollywood gang” is most fatiguing.
Akshaye Khanna, however, is excellent, and Sudhir Pandey is very good. Apart from them, TMK’s best scenes are its songs. After looking hot and gorgeous in the song Sheila ki Jawani, Katrina Kaif is relegated to hyperventilating. She and Akshay Kumar have few scenes together and no relationship. He, Akshay, has been in a relationship with himself for a while, so he plays himself here — calls his mother goondi, girlfriend kamini and generally bad-mouths and slaps everyone around him. Same-old.