From the Rental Vault: Tees Maar Khan (2010)

On the one hand, it would be tough to succeed as a thief and a con man if every time part of your plan went well everyone heard music and your name whispered in song.

On the other hand, Tabrez Mirza Khan (Akshay Kumar) -- known professionally as Tees Maar Khan or "the Khan of Cons"-- is the lead character in a Bollywood comedy heist movie, so random music and song and dance numbers are a routine part of life. Khan is being extradited to India after an arrest in France, but he escapes and returns to his old haunts and aspiring actress wife Anya (Katrina Kaif). Crimelord brothers get him to agree to rob a train of priceless antiques, and Khan decides he will pretend to film a movie near the village of Dhulia and enlist the villagers in a scheme to pull off the heist. Anya, despite her limited talent, is the female lead and a popular but greedy and dim movie star is conned into the male lead role.

Khan's presence unexpectedly solves a great problem facing Dhulia and he begins to feel guilty about duping the villagers. He resolves to cut them in on the profits of the robbery, but all may not go as smoothly as he has planned.

Tees Maar Khan owes a great deal to the 1966 Peter Sellers' movie After the Fox and the 1999 Steve Martin/Eddie Murphy film Bowfinger. It saunters a little through its story rather than moving as quickly as a heist picture usually needs. Bollywood movies are often longer than a straight-story version because of the obligatory musical productions, but Khan features only three of those and could stand to lose about a quarter of its story. Kumar handles the comedy aspect of his role well but isn't quite as charismatic and charming as an onscreen master of thieves and con men should be. Katrina Kaif deftly shifts between wooden semi-talented actress and airy vanity and gains a proper share of laughs. She also has the designated showstopper song-and-dance number but it happens a little too early in the movie, leaving some pretty long segments looking drained by comparison.

Khan was reviewed as an average movie, with some praise for the choreography and Kaif's dancing, so naturally it was one of the biggest hits of the year -- Indian critics seem to have as little in common with their countrymen's opinions as do those here. It's fun enough, but more tightly edited or perhaps with another musical number it could have been quite a bit better.