Masand's Verdict: Tara Rum Pum

OLD WINE: Saif nor Rani make make an impression because their characters are so unidimensional.

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Rajdeep Sardesai

26/11: Terror comes precariously close

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Cast: Saif Ali Khan, Rani Mukherji, Javed Jaffrey

Direction: Siddharth Anand

In director Siddharth Anand’s Ta Ra Rum Pum which releases at cinemas this week, New York-based racing-car champion Saif Ali Khan hits a bad spell when he’s injured in a racing accident that leaves him with the kind of emotional scars that he doesn’t quite recover from even a year later when he returns to the racing track.

He’s lost his speed and as a result, he loses his place on the team. With no savings to fall back on, and no job that’ll stick, Saif has no choice but to move his family from a sprawling home in Manhattan to a modest apartment in Queens.

His loving wife Rani Mukherjee stands by him like a rock, they decide to face all hardships with a smile, never once letting their two young kids realize that they’ve fallen upon hard times.

Taking up odd jobs here and there, the couple try their best to make ends meet, until one unfortunate incident involving their child, makes Saif return to the race track to regain his lost glory and save his family forever.

How do you even begin to explain what’s wrong about a film, that does nothing right to begin with? The one, the only, the real problem with Ta Ra Rum Pum is that there’s absolutely nothing new about it.

The plot’s been borrowed generously from such films as Cinderella Man, In America and Life Is Beautiful, but it’s also littered with so many Bollywood clichés that barely twenty minutes into the film, you can predict exactly where it’s going and how it’s going to end.

Another big problem I have with this film is the ooh-so-cute factor which almost made me puke. Kids should behave like kids, and watching them starve themselves to save money, or reach for other people’s half-eaten doughnuts is just not cool.

I know it’s all meant to tap at your tear-ducts and choke you up, but honestly the only feeling you’re overcome with is anger towards the director for his blatant attempt at emotional manipulation.

Also, when will we ever be spared those Bollywood stereotypes - the heroine’s father who insists his daughter has chosen the wrong guy? Then years later when she’s going through a bad patch, he’ll remind her that he’d warned her not to marry this guy.

And the honourable heroine who’ll defend her husband and reject any help that her dad is willing to offer. God help us, surely Siddharth Anand could have done better.

Like so many movies before it, Ta Ra Rum Pum is one of those glossy-but-soulless films which aren’t insufferable to sit through, but they’re an exercise in futility because they fail to touch you or move you or affect you in any way whatsoever.

Even though it’s meant to be an emotional story, you can’t really empathise with the characters because it’s all so plastic, so fake, so calculated and clinical.