Tees Maar Khan turns 15: Farah Khan’s madcap farce is her most distinctive film, with no method to the mayhem

Farah Khan’s sense of humour has always been a high-wire act. It can tilt either way, with very little warning. Take Main Hoon Na: if you told me, purely on paper, that there’s a professor (Satish Shah) who spits every time he speaks, I’d dismiss it instantly. It’s too desperate a gag to work. And yet, on screen, she soars with it. Or consider Om Shanti Om and that parody of Manoj Kumar. It’s patently silly, almost juvenile. But in Farah’s hands, that very silliness gains structure. In fact, timing, and even intent. What should be stupid becomes strangely sophisticated. Tees Maar Khan, though, was a different beast altogether. In her other films, the comedy eventually knows when to step aside. At some point, laughter yields to drama; drama makes way for an emotionally charged conflict. But here, Farah makes a radical choice. She refuses the full stop. She doesn’t pause for sincerity, neither wants an emotional safety net, nor aspires for a dramatic spine sneaking in to justify the madness. It is, in fact, unabashed to the point of recklessness. It is, in fact, just farce, stretched to its absolute limit, daring you to either buy it or admit that the commitment itself is a joke.

Despite its initial reception, Tees Maar Khan has gradually become a cult favorite among viewers.

What further sets Tees Maar Khan apart from Farah’s other films is that this was her first collaboration with a Shirish Kunder script (co-written with Ashmith Kunder and adapted from After the Fox). And with him, excess is the point. He is twice as imaginative, twice as funny, and twice as uninterested in reverence (see: Jaan-E-Mann). His absurdism becomes both the film’s backbone and its burden. Where Farah’s earlier outings, and even the later Happy New Year, she mocked the trends of Bombay cinema while still gazing at it through rose-tinted glasses. But here that affection evaporates. The method gives way to mayhem. Because, with Shirish in the mix, everything is fair game, and nothing really is sacred.

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This all-out parody reaches its sharpest edge in the film’s gleeful skewering of one of India’s most enduring obsessions: the Oscar. Enter Aatish Kapoor, a perpetually starving “superstar,” (played by Akshaye Khanna in a performance that only seems to grow in stature with time). Aatish Kapoor knows the math all too well, the only way to the Academy stage is to play a suffering Indian. What follows is one of the film’s most exquisitely staged sequences: Tees Maar Khan (Akshay Kumar), posing as a Hollywood filmmaker (Manoj “Day” Ramalan, a cheeky riff on M Night Shyamalan) arrives at Aatish’s home, dangling an Oscar as bait while pretending it means nothing to him. Aatish Kapoor, barely able to contain himself, plays hard to get, even as Aamir Khan waits on the phone line, ready to snatch the role, (and hopefully the trophy). Indeed, the joke writes itself.

Akshaye Khanna is, to this day, known for his role in Tees Maar Khan.

The film is riddled with such inside jokes, each more shameless than the last. Katrina Kaif plays an actress so hopelessly talentless that her entire existence is justified through item numbers alone. Salman Khan appears in an Eid song, (looking like he’s walked in from the sets of Saawariya), purely to dance with Katrina. Komal Nahta (one of industry’s most respected trade analysts) makes his acting debut only to solemnly label a B-movie as “French cinema.” In a purely planned coincidence, Farah ends up making a B-movie about the making of a B-movie. However, if the heart is Shirish’s, then the soul is hers. So, beneath all the gags, Tees Maar Khan, the character stumbles into a genuine arc, discovering, almost accidentally, the idea of community and the curious way cinema can unite people. So, beneath all the noise, Farah’s urging filmmakers don’t need Western approval after all; perhaps our own storytelling traditions are enough. But the film never pauses to underline this. It laughs through its own ideas, undercuts its own meaning, and moves on with its absurdity. It doesn’t ask to be taken seriously, and that, ironically, is where it finds its honesty. Because, even if the jokes write themselves, Farah is the hand that guides the punchline.