TEES MAAR KHAN Bollywood is replete with examples of fetishes of film makers who closely associate these fetishes with the success of their films. The earliest example is that of film maker J Omprakash who always wanted his movie titles to begin with A; and in recent times we have the example of Karan Johar, who has a similar fetish with the letter K. Farah Khan, who began her career as a choreographer and quickly moved into the shoes of another Khan choreographer (Saroj Khan) quickly won a lot of acclaim for her work and then decided to expand her role to include film direction. Having got the box-office ringing with her first two ventures, MAIN HOON NA and OM SHANTI OM (both of which had Shah Rukh Khan playing the lead), she perhaps concluded that since both the films had three words, three is a lucky number for her. So soon after the success of the first two movies, she gave birth to triplets and her husband, an electronics engineer, Shirish Kunder and she floated a production house called Three's Company! She also perhaps knew that the presence of Shah Rukh Khan in the first two movies was a big factor for the success of those movies, but because she was not having him in her next movie (I will not go into the reasons for that here), she felt that the word KHAN appearing in the title would help. When she was finding it difficult to combine the word KHAN with her fetish for "TEEN" to get the title of her new movie, I presume a well-wisher perhaps told her that using a multiplication factor of ten would triple the chances of the movie's success; thus the word "TEES" came into the title. The choice of the third word was relatively easy, since the phrase TEES MAAR KHAN connoted a braggart and which was in tune with the character of the script itself. The next exercise was to find an inspiration for this tale and happily for her, that was also a three worded Peter Sellers starrer: AFTER THE FOX. Also, perhaps other well wishers suggested to her that she must have as many Ks as was possible in the film crew and therefore had her husband Kunder work for the background music, write(?) the story, co-produce and write some of the lyrics. The star cast also had a number of Ks: AKshay Kumar, AKshaye Khanna, Katrina Kaif, Sachin KhedeKar and special artistes like Salman Khan and Anil Kapoor! Now about the movie itself. Claiming to be a parody, it turns out to be a rather inane effort. Several scenes of the movie looked utterly pedestrian both in conception and execution and the only saving grace is the performance of Akshaye Khanna in the role of an Oscar hungry actor. Of course, the review will not be complete without the mention of the much touted Sheela Ki Jawaani number by Katrina Kaif; but Katrina with her innocent looks doesn't ooze with oomph despite the raunchy lyrics and the dance movements. I would rate Munni Badnaam from Dabangg (also choreographed by Farah) as a better song although the joke which I heard when I was coming out from the theatre was: Agar Sheela Ki Jawaani Pehle Aati, to Munni Badnaam Na Hoti!
