Genre : All-in-one
Year : 2007
Running time : 3 hours
Director : Siddharth Anand
Cast : Saif Ali Khan, Rani Mukherjee, Javed Jaffrey, Angelina Idnani, Ali Haji
TA RA RUM PUM : SLICK PACKAGE CAN’T SAVE THIS ONE
Another film from the director who made Salaam Namaste. And as I leave the theatre, I’m wondering how old the guy is. He’s actually 27 or more, I’m amazed to find. You’d think at 27 you’d make less juvenile movies. But no, TRRP proves me wrong.
I’d seen the trailer, so had a pretty good idea what the movie was about. If you’ve heard about it even in passing, you know it’s about car-racing – Rajveer Singh or RV (Saif) being the car-racer, who’s starts out as pit-crew but ends up behind the wheel when he accidentally impresses a racing team’s manger (Jafri). He also meets pretty young pianist Radhika (Rani), they fall in love and wedding pheras (sans Radhika’s Dad’s blessings) follow. A lovely modern house, and two precocious, annoying kids (Champ and Princess) help complete the suburban, desi, richie-rich package in Manhattan.
And all is well until (surprise, surprise) RV speeds into disaster at the race-track . . .
The film is set in New York, so nice, polished locales are a given. Plus if you’ve seen SN, you know the director pays attention to detail – clothes, sets the works. The film even features a cartoon character filled song. The story is the usual – happy-happy romancing, marriage and kids etc. and then problems strike. The film ran along it’s predicted path pretty tamely, and if I had to relate to you the entire story verbally, it would be a saga of un-ending sentences starting with boring “And then ……”s.
By the time the interval came, it seemed like eons had passed, and not a single emotion in that first-half had moved me – I had trouble believing, and sympathizing with the flaky characters. One does not feel for morons. Major flaws in Rani’s characterization – pre-marriage, she’s thrifty even being super-rich, and post-marriage the woman can’t open her mouth to tell her extravagant, “let’s pay for everything in installments” husband to straighten up. Plus being a parent, I was pretty ticked off with the whole “let’s not tell the kid’s we are poor” philosophy. Kids are smarter than that – they’ll cotton on. Yes, people make mistakes, and do dumb stuff, and my problem is not with the fact that Radhika and RV do all of that – what leaves me unmoved is that they have very few redeeming qualities.
Rani appears as a rich, college-girl majoring in music, in the first half of the film. Thus, I assume the choice of mini-skirts – which Rani can’t carry off at all (unless she majorly loses weight). She ends up looking dumpy. And that terrible, fusili-inspired hair-do didn’t help at all. What exactly was that supposed to be ? Delicate tendrils of hair framing her face? It widened her face, and she looked vacuous. Along with the mini-skirted bottom, she looked like a walking-talking cylinder – which is amazing because she’s a gorgeous woman and I’d imagine you’d have to try hard to make her look bad. Saif could stand to lose some weight too.
The kids, who were specially selected to play these roles, did well, considering the terrible, and sometimes very mature lines they were given – I’m thinking which kid actually talks like this ? Kids are mostly smart and interesting to talk to – why are they always so annoyingly ESP-ish on desi films ? Whatever credit is due in this film, goes to Javed Jafri as strongly accented Harry, and Rani who’s managed to imbue this improbable role with some sincerity. I didn’t feel Saif in this film at all, no spark, no sizzle, and his sweat-encrusted face (in his helmet) was a total turn-off – he looked like he had cold sores all over his face. Plus the name RV – when I hear RV, all I can think of is recreational vehicle (the kind SRK drove in Swades).
The second half is just about tolerable, and that’s a relative measure because the first half left me indifferent. Tepid, very tepid, and in retrospect something I wished I hadn’t watched.
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