Vittorio De Sica walked so that Farah Khan could run by Soniya Pondcar

Vittorio de Sica's 1966 film with Peter sellers

In Tees Maar Khan (2010), a feisty Anya (Katrina Kaif), a struggling actress and the female lead of the film is introduced to the audience, enthralled in a dancing frenzy in the popular item number Sheila Ki Jawani. The barely clad aspirant performs seductively in front of the perverted director, in true Bollywood item girl fashion, and sings questionable lyrics. “I know you want it, but you're never going to get it, you're never going to get my body,” “Aren’t nobody got a body like Sheila.” When the lyrics initially clicked for me, I was left puzzled. It faintly reminded me of Laura Mulvey’s theory of male gaze, which talks not only about the camera operating through a cisgender heterosexual man’s lens, reducing women to mere objects, but also explains voyeurism: the pleasure of looking vs the pleasure of being looked at. And analyzing her proud proclamations throughout the song, it was clear that Anya wasn’t merely aware of deriving pleasure from the creepy director’s gaze: she was basking in it. Rejoicing it, celebrating it even.

Throughout the performance, she gets interrupted by her protective boyfriend, Tabrez Mirza Khan (Akshay Kumar), a notorious conman and the titular character of the film. Along with his sidekicks, he tries to sabotage her dance routine in every way possible; she struggles to break free from the dominant chokehold he has her in, his negative views about the film industry and how it would eventually exploit her. In a later sequence, we see him dismissing Anya’s obsession with becoming an actress, elaborating on the horrors of casting couch. “Where was the director’s acting contract? In his hotel room?” he asks rhetorically to which Anya innocently, unsuccessfully tries to resist. And while to an extent we despise Tabrez for being a controlling partner, we do see some truth in his words. The film industry, at its core, is built upon patriarchy. Taking a leaf out of Laura Mulvey’s own theory, the camera sees women as objects meant to fulfill the desire of the average cisgender heterosexual man, reinforcing patriarchy and objectifying women.

An unethical (male) protagonist of an equally unethical film about cinema itself making this statement is all sorts of strange. For starters, Tabrez makes his living as a criminal. Not as a small-time petty thief, but as someone who has made the top-tier wanted list of several investigative officers, as a previous scene illustrates. He works under the alias of “Tees Maar Khan,” literally translating to “He Who Killed Thirty,” and under the farce of a director in front of his cinema-obsessed mother.

 https://youtu.be/MrQl0VsQYtw?si=Mx98GNCHYAvFMFVP

Much like Farah Khan’s previous films, Bollywood runs in Tees Maar Khan’s blood. The film opens with a shot of a pregnant woman absorbed in a crime action Bollywood drama, when her husband, a cop, warns that her obsession with such movies could have an adverse effect on their unborn child– imagine a cop’s child getting negatively influenced and turning out to be a thief. His fear comes true: the child grows up to be wanted criminal Tees Maar Khan, all while being unbeknownst to his own mother. The influence of Bollywood remains constant: his girlfriend is set on becoming an actress, his mother prides on being a famous film director’s mother (in a hilarious jab at herself, Khan introduces her previous venture Om Shanti Om, as a film directed by Tabrez), and the film spouts out random Bollywood references every two minutes. Unsurprisingly, we even get cameos that contribute nothing to the plot, from stars like Salman Khan and Anil Kapoor, just for the fun of it.

However, Tees Maar Khan isn’t an original creation– at least not plot-wise. The film is a remake of Vittorio De Sica’s After The Fox (1966), which is honestly strange when you think about how one of the most far-fetched outlandish films made in Bollywood is a rip-off of a film by the pioneer of “serious” cinema, a director who makes film not for overcrowded cinema halls, but for film students to cite in their 40-page long dissertations. I mean, this guy made Bicycle Thieves, how could he also make the predecessor to a Farah Khan film? But I watched and compared the two films, and the verdict was clear: while De Sica’s humor is more subtle and understated, Khan goes all out in her venture and relies on slapstick comedy and exaggerated comic sequences to provide a fun-filled ride.

Amidst the differences, a bunch of things remain common between the two films. One, the premise, obviously. A notorious conman pretends to be a successful director, ropes in a famous film star and an entire clueless village in his nefarious scheme while pretending to direct a film. Two, both films failed to strike a chord with the critics upon release but later went on to achieve cult classic status. And three, both work as pretty good satires of the film industries the respective director is affiliated with. De Sica was a towering figure in Italian Neorealism; incidentally, that is the very film movement that After The Fox aims to poke fun at. Khan, after the successes of her previous ventures Main Hoon Na(2004) and Om Shanti Om (2007), established herself as one of the most bankable contemporary directors of contemporary Hindi cinema, which is precisely what her film’s target butt-of-the-joke is.

The two films also do a good job at highlighting the shady bits of film as an industry itself, not tied down to a particular country or genre. In After The Fox, Anya’s character is replaced by Gina (Britt Ekland), the sixteen-year-old sister of the protagonist Aldo “The Fox” Vannucci (Peter Sellers) who is similarly besotted with acting. Although initially discouraging of her passion, Vannucci eventually pairs her opposite the much older film star, Tony Powell. De Sica subtly draws attention to the film industry’s habit of casting young actresses with male actors well past their prime, which is a common phenomenon in Bollywood as well. (Khan employing this detail would have been the greatest inside joke in the film, given the age gap between Kumar and Kaif itself). Powell, on the other hand, is plagued with his own problems: a fading superstar, he struggles with internalised ageism, the prominent wrinkles on his face, the looming figure of never being cast as the film’s lead ever again and having to resort to side roles.

In Tees Maar Khan, we have Atish Kapoor (essayed by an effortlessly comical Akshaye Khanna), the leadman of Tabrez’s make-believe film Bharat Ka Khazana. A self-centered film star, Atish has everything one would want fame, money, a massive fanbase, countless admirers. All, except for the Oscar award that he is so fixated on winning. This film was released about a year after Slumdog Millionaire had been released and won big at the Academy Awards, which had created an atmosphere of international recognition amidst the Bollywood film family– Atish’s character is an embodiment of that imminent desire. He groans and sulks after watching Anil Kapoor dance on the prestigious stage on his television. He doesn’t want to do commercial films anymore; he wants to make a “serious” film that will get him a “serious” award for an Oscar.

Serious film translates to “no money,” a sentiment echoed in After The Fox. Vanucci disguises himself as famous Neo-realist filmmaker “Federico Fabrizi” (an obvious hint at Federico Fellini) and casts Tony in his farce film The Gold of Cairo(again, a reference to De Sica’s own film The Gold Of Naples) in the town of Sevalio where he plans to carry his scheme out. De Sica himself makes an appearance in the film at one point, plays around within the conventions of his own genre, calling out the absurdity of the unexplained obsession with slow burn realism, by including a scene which features Gina and Tony, merely sitting in front of the camera, which is supposed to be some kind of complex social commentary in disguise. And the villagers, blinded by the power of “serious filmmaking” agree and comply.

What both films do best, however, is illustrating the extent of celebrity worship and film obsession that the general public has. Atish Kapoor’s popularity is underlined with the fact that celebrities like him are rarely ever questioned by the authorities because of their massive popularity, and are often accompanied with tight security and additional protection from the police, making him the perfect candidate to be cast in Tabrez’s film. The residents of the little village of Dhulia which is shortlisted as the location for the film are more than happy to give away their everything to simply be a part of a film– or as Tabrez puts it, “be immortalized on the silver screen.” Such is their craze for Bollywood and blind trust in Tabrez, that they even end up giving up the keys to their local bank upon hearing that the “producers” are running out of money to continue working on the film. All this obviously sounds unrealistic and buffoonish, but the film doesn’t aim for realism; it merely provides a caricature of the average Indian Bollywood fan. Ultimately, the thoughtfulness of Dhulia’s residents gets to Tabrez and co, and they decide to donate a portion of their share from the treasure to the townsfolk.

And here’s where we get to see the humane side of the cold, clever thief– a perspective that After The Fox never gives. In Tees Maar Khan, we see the faux film actually get a star-studded premier, receiving critical and commercial acclaim somehow, and the cast and crew achieving their dreams. No matter how absurd and rambunctious the film is, and how problematic some of the humor is, in the end, everyone gets a happy ending. I think that’s Farah Khan’s way of showing love to the industry she likes to make so much fun of.

In her debut film, Main Hoon Na, a lovestruck Major Ram (Shah Rukh Khan) bursts into a spontaneous love anthem upon seeing Miss Chandni (Sushmita Sen) for the first time, in true Bollywood musical fashion. The movie displayed an inkling of what would go on to become Khan’s signature style in all her films: making fun of Bollywood. Her next release, and at the time, also her biggest one, Om Shanti Om, took it up a notch– the entire film is a bedazzled Bollywood parody epic. Tees Maar Khan, in comparison, a goofy comic entertainer that doesn’t even take itself seriously, being the follow-up to one of the most beloved films in Bollywood history was definitely seen as a disappointment, even though it did manage to earn quite a bit on the box office. But every non-sensical antic that dons itself as a dig at Bollywood is at the end of the day, deeply rooted in immense love for the same industry that made Khan such a household name.

Today in 2025, there is an immense dearth of such polarising satirical pieces. In the current cinematic climate of mass action entertainers, commercially bankable unnecessary sequels of classics of the yesteryears, and jingoistic propaganda pieces, something as wacky as a Badass Ravi Kumar comes across like a breath of fresh air. And maybe, that’s what truly is going to save the Hindi film industry. With regional film industries like Tollywood and Mollywood taking over, perhaps all the Hindi film industry needs to do is go back to its prime years and start making self-aware unhinged slapstick comedies again.

Soniya Pondcar is a Mumbai based film critic, artist and feature writer.