Tees Maar Khan

Rating : 3/10
Release Date : 24th December, 2010
Time : 135 minutes
Director : Farah Khan; Writer : Shirish Kunder; Music : Vishal – Shekhar & Shirish Kunder (background & title track)
Starring : Akshay Kumar, Katrina Kaif, Akshaye Khanna, Arya Babbar
There are three great moments in the film. First, I loved the opening credits (quite innovative) and funky with the title track playing in the background. Second were the end credits, with Farah Khan continuing her tradition of filming everyone during the roll, right from the lightboy to herself. Third was Sheila ki Jawani. Watching Katrina pulsate and groove on the big screen, with her dresses slung impossibly low (even lower than Shilpa Shetty’s sarees), was something special. The rest of the film was terrible.



The story is pure nonsense. A great con-man, played by Akshay Kumar (we’re never given any proof of his exploits apart from a very very silly airplane caper) is hired by the evil Siamese twins (Raghu & his twin brother) to recover their loot from the cops (the most bumbling kind you’ll ever see) who are transporting all 10,000 kgs via train. Apparently Akshay is the only guy who can do this. He concocts a truly artrocious, hare-brained scheme, enlists the support of a famous actor (Akshaye Khanna), who has an Oscar fetish, and a whole village of idiots to try to steal back the treasure. Will he succeed ? What will the evil brothers do ? Don’t hold your breath, it aint worth it…



Akshay over acted, tried too hard and was too loud in keeping with the general tenor of the film. Katrina, playing Askhay’s girlfriend and a wannabe item girl, was very good, both in terms of looks and performance, playing the bimbette to perfection. Akshaye demonstrated once more why he is a fantastic actor, wish we saw more of him and in better roles.


The jokes & even the capers are silly, crass and crude. Tawaif’s, dumb cops, lipstick marks, loud, almost fluorescent clothes. The only time the jokes are funny is when they’re the insider industry jokes and most of them are against SRK. His angst at missing out on Slumdog, the craving for an Oscar, the six packs. But sadly these moments are far and few in between.


This film is another of those where I’m left full of regret at what could’ve been. What a platform this film had built in terms of excitement, hype and music. It had brought the audiences flocking back to the screens. Alas, its life is likely to be even shorter than Shelia’s now infamous Jawani…

New York

Rating : 6/10
Release Date : 26th June, 2009
Time : 153 minutes
Director : Kabir Khan; Writer : Sandeep Srivastava; Music : Pritam
Starring : John Abraham, Katrina Kaif, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Irrfan

In most countries, civilized ones that is, if the cops come and arrest you on mere suspicion (no evidence), detain you for 6-9 months, torture you, beat you, deprive you of your basic civil rights (food / clothing / right to a lawyer) and racially insult you / your religion, its regarded as a major human rights violation. In the USA, this is routine procedure as per the Patriots Act.


This point and how such procedures / violence in turn breed terrorism is the central point of Kabir Khan’s second film, New York, which traces the lives of three friends who are immigrants in USA and how the events of 9/11 impacted them and so many others like them.

They are college students, John, Katrina and Neil, there is an unspoken love triangle amongst them, lots of fun and games, laughter, partying. 9/11 happens towards the end of their college, shaking things up. Unrelatedly, they drift apart, Neil returning to india and then coming back to USA, running a taxi service. And then the FBI comes in, makes the three get back together and things change forever….


My Dad used the word taut while describing the film and its edited quite well, for sure, keeping it nice and tight, the story moving at all times. The camera angles are interesting and the first half is speckled with some good jokes, the most memorable being Neil’s “I’ve just come.” Followed by John’s “Really ? Bas gale milne se hi ?”. The three central characters act well. Neil was better than what I expected. Katrina, after a long while, got a role that required her to be more than just eye candy. John was as good as we would expect – fun in the party section and serious when he was needed to be.


It is a bit heavy though, and there are parts during the film where you wish you could watch in FF mode. The journey to the slightly predictable, mostly implausible end is not all fun and games and while not bad, is not brilliant either. In fact implausibility is writ large over a lot of the film, both major and minor, as the FBI would not have so many meetings with an informant in the open, a lot of the in-car shots showed the front car passenger without a seat belt etc


Kabir makes nice, thoughtful films. His first feature, Kabul Express, took a wry look at Afghanistan. This one focuses on USA’s response to 9/11 and I could kind of sense Kabir’s dilemma throughtout the film – I feel he thinks the USA did wrong, they’ve created more terrorists through their own actions etc. He tried to provide an ‘other side’ through Irrfan, the Muslim FBI agent, but he comes across as too trite, too flat. In the end, unfortunately, despite a few sparks and some good performances, even the film rises above mediocrity, but only just…

Singh is Kinng

Rating : 5/10
Running Time : 136 Minutes
Release Date : 8th August ‘08
Director & writer : Anees Bazmee ; Music : Pritam
Starring : Akshay Kumar, Katrina Kaif, Neha Dhupia, Om Puri, Kirron Kher, Ranvir Shorey, Sonu Sood, Javed Jaffrey, Yashpal Sharma

For those who like that kind of stuff, this is yet another mindless film masquerading as a comedy. And all the hype yet again reveals something very slapstick, very ordinary. The first half is not so bad, if you don’t mind a little slapstick and some very Punjabi humour. The second half just deteriorates into unnecessary weeping, melodrama and one implausible situation after another.

The plot, that of a do-gooder cum nuisance, Happy Singh, being sent to Australia to bring an ex-resident of the village and current Don, Lucky Singh, is already implausible to the extreme. The sub-plots, involving Katrina, Kirron Kher, Javed Jaffrey and the other members of Lucky’s gang stretch credibility even further.

Its not without its moments though…the lingo is very rustic Punjabi and raises a lot of laughs. ‘Chehra itna bhola, andar bam ka gola’ or ‘lady Bheem’ were both delightful descriptors of Katrina. Names like Happy, Lucky and Mika cannot belong to any other community in the world. Pankaj Uddas, with his mournful, morbid stories, was a very nice touch. Javed Jaffrey’s removal of all guns from his person was funny. And the scene in the second half, involving Lucky Singh on a wheelchair being used as a waiter, was absolutely hilarious.

However, there was a tendency to degenerate into slapstick (the film begins with the oldest slapstick routine in the book with Akshay chasing a hen through the streets of his village), the situations become more and more flimsy and I really didn’t understand the need to switch gears and become so emotional in the second half – it absolutely ruined the whole film. Katrina & Neha looked lovely through the film, Akshay holds his own and most people acted decently, except Ranvir, who looks out of sorts and a bit mis-cast. The music is a split between the good (the title song and Jee Karda), the ugly (the snoopy dogg song and ‘Talli hua’) and the ok (most others), though all songs were forced into the film


I’ve also not understood the recent trend of choosing another country just for exotic locales – when it was a rarity, like the tulip fields of Silsila or the Switzerland scenery in Darr, it worked. Now I really feel the locale should have something to do with the plot…I mean the Mummy, quite obviously, needed Egypt just as Crocodile Dundee needed Australia. Singh is Kinng needed neither yet we were treated to songs in Egypt and the rest of the movie ostensibly in Australia.

In some ways though, the movie is almost like an ad for Punjab and its delightful, over-sized, gregarious residents. I remember when a restaurant chain called ‘Punjabi by Nature’ opened up in Delhi and quickly established itself as an iconic Punjabi place with its vodka-shot gol gappa’s, oversized naan’s (pls never order 2) and tangy butter chicken. This movie has already, due to its title, established itself as an icon of all Sikh’s and has been parodied / used and re-used in news channels, normal conversations, posters, sms jokes etc. Its commercial success is almost assured. Pity though that the imaginative title and the lovely designer pagdi’s was followed by something so trite, so ordinary. Surely the kingly Singh’s of the world deserved better.