Ta Ra Rum Pum is ho hum

Even when India is going through the best economic boom ever, there is still the YashRaj stable which still cannot make a single movie that can be based out of India. So it will have to be couples in New York, Australia, London living in opulent houses or Indian cops chasing skirts in Brazil. So throwing probability to the winds, Sidharth Anand armed with crores of money from Yashraj gives us Ta Ra Rum Pum the story of a Nascar driver in New York. Well his last Salaam Namaste with its torturous second half was redeemed by good songs and Javed Jaffrey.

Javed Jaffrey is again the saving grace here with his superb Gujju impersonation and comic timing. Saif Ali Khan plays RV a pit stop tyre changer who manages a lucky break as a racing car driver due to Javed Jaffrey and goes on to win the race. Soon he also falls in love with Rani and soon they are best couple, best parents and best clients for all companies that lend on instalments.

But things go awry and RV has an accident that halts his racing career. So the loans pile up and he is back to fighting for 2 square meals a day. He is forced to drive a cab and Rani has to play the piano in dull places. Finally he still has to enter the race track to save his son's life and alls well that ends well.

Now there are many problems with what should have been a good desi khichdi of Cinderella Man, Pursuit of Happyness and others. Firstly such movies require a lot of earnestness to make which somehow the entire Yash Chopra school lacks. Their school of filmmaking completely lacks any course in realism, natural situations or using simple sequences powerfully. So the movie just gift wraps cardboard characters and adds some lip service emotional ingredients hoping that the audience would identify with the strife.

Let me give a comparison. The scene in Mr.India where the children go without food for a day and the sad version of zindagi ki yehi reet hai plays, coupled with the sincerity of acting by Anil Kapoor and the entire bunch really brings tears to your eyes. But when the kids skip lunch daily in Tara Rum Pum to make ends meet it somehow doesnt move you. Except for a couple of scenes when Rani takes over to give Saif a dressing down for conning his cabbie friends to lend money or when she meets her dad in the hotel, the rest seem quite forced and unconvincing.

The big money spent in the car racing sequence is captured well by the cameraman(Binod Pradhan) and some shots of New York are good. The music by Vishal-Shekhar is quite a letdown and somehow I get a feeling they were made to adapt their natural style for this movie.

Like in Salam Namaste, Sidharth Anand shows that his command over the medium to showcase emotions is still poor. Its like giving Archies cards to moms on Mothers day in India. Just doesnt touch the heart in the right places!