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Ta Ra Rum Pum (2007) Director: Siddharth Anand Cast: Saif Ali Khan, Rani Mukherjee, Jaaved Jaffrey Time: 160 min. Hindi with English subtitles Rating: |
The reassuring thing about Bollywood films is their transparency—you almost always know what you’re going to get. With Ta Ra Rum Pum, you know you’re walking into a family film with some melodrama, some saccharin moments, a handful of songs and dances, some moral messages, and a happy ending. What’s nice about TRRP is that, unlike many Bollywood films, it delivers fun, mindless entertainment without boring you or insulting your intelligence.
TRRP’s plot couldn’t be more basic. Tire changer RV (Khan) accidentally encounters music student Radhika (Mukherjee), and after crossing paths a few more times, they fall in love. Marriage and children soon follow. In the meantime, RV becomes a successful racer car driver until a crash causes him to lose his nerve.
RV soon loses his job. They family soon loses their house. They quickly move from Manhattan to Queens, and to protect their children from the truth of their sudden poverty, they convince the children they’re only pretending to be poor for a reality TV show (seriously). From there, life just fishtails out of control.
All things considered, I have to confess I really have nothing bad to say about Ta Ra Rum Pum. Certainly, the film has its flaws, but why complain about them? TRRP isn’t an attempt to make great art. It isn’t trying to raise social or political awareness about anything. It doesn’t even care to take itself seriously. This is just pure fun, so why not just accept it for that?
Still, for the sake of entertainment (since this is an entertaining movie), I’ll offer some commentary.
Overall, the songs and dances are pretty weak. Not one song from the film is memorable. The sequence with the animated cartoon bears proves to be fairly interesting only because it blends live action with computer animation surprisingly well.
Another minor complaint (which only real New Yorkers would make) can be made about the film’s logistical errors. At the beginning of the movie, RV wants to go from Chelsea to Times Square, but for some reason, he goes via 125th Street and crosses some random bridge. Also, while living in Jackson Heights in Queens, the family decides to bathe in a fountain—in Washington Square Park in Manhattan. And the family home is a large single-family house in the wilderness—supposedly in Manhattan.
Likewise, the melodrama seems a little excessive—the only way RV can save his son is by making a grand racing comeback during a single race. To director Anand’s credit, he keeps everyone from overacting, sparing the audience from copious weeping and obnoxiously sappy dialogues.
On a more serious note, TRRP presents a fairly offensive message—that poor people and poverty are filthy things. The family’s comments about being displaced to Jackson Heights seethe with repulsion; you would think they’re being dropped in the middle of a leper colony. Even trying to play down their comments as the typical inter-borough rivalry between Manhattan and the rest of New York fails to hide the genuine disgust for the poor.
Thankfully, this message doesn’t feature prominently in the film.
On the positive side, the actions scenes are well filmed. Even though portions of the crowds in the stands appear to be computer generated, the race scenes were clearly filmed live, and they demonstrate some great camera and stunt work, especially during the crashes.
The acting also deserves mention. Granted, the script certainly doesn’t challenge the highly talented cast (but how could Mukherjee and Khan out-do themselves after Black and Omkhara, respectively), but at least the script doesn’t descend to such melodramatic depths that the actors embarrass themselves.
Ta Ra Rum Pum isn’t incredible cinema, but it does what good cinema should do—it looks nice, the story is entertaining, the acting is competent, the action is engaging, and it’s just fun. When the opening credits roll, turn off your mind and enjoy the pleasant ride.
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