Sunday, April 29, 2007

Poor is the new cool, says Ta Ra Rum Pum

Siddharth Anand's debut movie was Salaam Namaste which claimed to deal with the oh..so uncomfortable topic of live-in relationships, but ended up being quite a messy affair starring the non-committal Saif, a very loud and nagging Preity Zinta and complicated childbirth in the end.
Many people often ask me as to why I go to see such movies if I don't like them and poke fun at them all the time. It is a fair question...much better than asking someone their future plans or why one needs to go to the beauty parlour every once in a while. I have brainstormed about this myself and have concluded that it is nothing but my love for Hindi movies. Yes, I agree that I would never go to the theatre to watch a Mithun movie because it costs money and I have to exercise my choice then but if it's on television, I wouldn't mind watching it.
Anyway, I was game for Ta Ra Rum Pum since the day I saw the promos and I had a fair idea of what was coming. Yashraj Films is definitely the biggest player in Bollywood making all the so called extravagant family films, starring all Bollywood biggies and keeping the cash registers ringing. This genre was created by the now on the sidelines, Barjatiyas, but they focussed primarily on the shaadis but it was Yashraj and KJo (I use these two names interchangeably)who made this genre what it is, focussing on other significant events in Indian families like sagai, janamdin, naamkaran, shaadi ki salgirah, funerals and now, poverty. The fundas are clear...It's all about loving your family...Incidentally, none of these movies are based in India, although they are often about successful Indians living abroad who despite, following a very so called "Western" lifestyle are Indian to the core. And by Indian, they mostly mean Punjabi and by Punjabi, they often imply lavish and super rich people who love their families, of course!
So, Ta Ra Rum Pum is a departure from the Yashraj formula in a way that the super richness of these Punjabi individuals do not form the crux of the story but it is about the triumph of the human spirit and family bonding, at the end of the day. I could end this post in a line, namely cabbie-racing champion-cabbie-racing champion but I am a little less prosaic than that, so I will go into some (ok..who am I kidding, great) detail. This is a story about Rajveer (Cabbie/RV), a cabbie turned racing pit wheel changer turned racing champ and Radhika (Shona), the world's best pianist, after Adrian Brody, of course, who was the original pianist in Polanski's Oscar winning film of the same name and their two lovely but irritating kids, Champ and Princess (no a.k.a's needed here) and a dog, Bruno (given the logic of naming characters in this particular movie, may be the dog should have had a more human name like the YR favourities, Raj or Rahul!). Anyway, RV becomes a succesful racer, marries his sweetheart Radhika, who he calls Shona and the interpretation for Shona, according to him is sweet in Bong, which it is soooo not. (Shona means gold in Bong, as much as it means in Hindi and we, Bongs use the term shona for describing a dear/ good/nice person..sweet in Bong is MISHTI! Shame on you Saif, half Bong and related to R. Tagore hoye tumi ei Bangla jaano? ) and has two lovely kids, who later adopt a Labrador (I hope I am getting the breed of the dog right because it is so important to the story!) from the streets and call him Bruno. But one day, tragedy strikes this happy family when Saif is severely injured in a racing accident and everything changes. He fails to get his groove back on the racing track, is fired from his racing team and has a fall out with his team manager cum best friend, Harry but hey, who cares..he has his family! A family that helps him get through tough times but cannot help him find his lost speed on the racing track. Thus, the Ta Ra Rum Pum family is thrown out of their mansion, their car is taken away and all their stuff auctioned away, including Rani's 50,000 dollar engagement ring from Tiffany's (how could they??) and are forced to move downtown into a predominantly Indian/South Asian neighbourhood, thus poor.
They lie to their children making up the most ridiculous story ever, in the history of excuses that they are in fact part of a TV reality show where they are required to be poor for a while without shedding a tear (this explains the always a smiling face stereotype, shamelessly promoted through the movie) and once they win, they can return to their original life. What follows is a series of aansu type moments, where Saif is forced to become a cabbie, Rani is forced to take up a job of a pianist at seedy bars/restaurants/birthday parties/funerals and keep up a happy face and the kids, Champ and Princess, when they become aware of the reality of their situation and that they are sachhi mein poor, they start skipping lunch and save the money to pay their school fees. But the family cannot make enough money in time to pay the children's school fees, so Saif lies to his fellow cabbies, fakes his daughter's illness and collects enough money to pay the fees. Then, Champ falls ill, as he had once swallowed a piece of glass when he ate a half eaten doughnut from the trashcan at the school canteen. We are back in 1970s mode, where the surgery of the child requires a lot of money and the family is broke so.......Saif goes to his ex-boss and begs for money, boss insults him and then he gives it off to boss in true filmy style and then, his friend Harry also joins him and then, they form the dream racing team and then, Saif races (uff..I am tired) and wins, of course....triumph of the human spirit, remember!
This film was made of moments, most of them glorious, some not so much...Here is my list of 'wtf' moments from Ta Ra Rum Pum:
1. Someone explain the title to to me...It appears twice in the movie, in two different songs, in very different contexts, one happy with lots of bad animation with cartoon bears wearing their names on their heads and the one is about hope, when Shona is telling kids to learn to be poor and deal with it!
2. Rani Mukerjee's fashion sense in the pre-matrimonial scenario. She has lost a lot of weight to wear those backless tops and short skirts but nothing explains her really bad, semi-blonde hair! Rani, I empathise with you on the Abhi-Ash wedding thingy and I was hurt as a fellow Bong to see that you were not invited but when you are short and stocky, stick to being the girl next door, it suits you and also, when you need a new hairstyle, hit the salon and not the wig store! It looked like it could fall off any moment!
3. Rani is a Bong in the film and so to do justice to her character and appeal to the Bengali audience, she was made to utter two lines in Bengali through the movie...oh..how charming! Besides, she was called Shona by her cute Punjabi husband...I bet Shona will become the next eeeshhh (remember Devdas, where Ash made eeesh popular as a sexually explicit term when we Bongs use it to express our angst at something and always in a non-sexual way! )
4. Saif's arch rival racer, Rusty who is played by an otherwise out-of-work American actor and I can totally understand why. In the bits he appeared, he is frowning and raising one eyebrow and gritting his teeth in true Bollywood style, like Amrish Puri or Ranjeet. He was trying to totally soak up the essence of the Bollywood villain in the few minutes of screen time he had and he gave us a few laughs.
5. Once, when the Ta Ra Rum Pum family is still poor, there is no water in the house, so the family goes to take a bath in a designer fountain right in the middle of NYC, much like people do in Indian villages, when they hit the village pond (The Bharatiya connection, you see) but not half as appropriate. I think this scene was incorporated because Saif really wanted to appear shirtless in at least one song and the director was not left with much choice.
6. Poor as this family was, eating out of trashcans and stealing food from parties for their next meal, their clothes and accesories were far from it. Rani was wearing the most expensive clothes in every scene, which looked totally out of a Marks and Spencer showroom (I am told by my friends knowledgable in high fashion that M&S is not for rich people..it is, by my standards but not by Yash Uncle's standards....in that case, Harrods/Versace sounds good, I suppose, unless they too are affordable to the poor in the U.S of A) . But may be, I don't quiet understand the YR brand of poverty. You have no food, but you still wear good clothes! Keeps debtors away, I suppose...How unsympatheic of me to have not thought about that before! But I have to admit, their house looked really poor.
7. Who abandons young, healthy Labradors on the streets for kids to pick them up? May be, it was lost or may be, it happens in NYC.
8. Who gets married in a running car, with one of the parties driving? People, please don't encourage reckless driving like this. We already have a large number of road accidents and now if people start getting married in cars while driving, with the pastor in the back seat, (as if, getting married on a hot air balloon or a flight was not enough), let me assure you, that the marriage won't be long-lasting, as promised.
9. Who makes up stories about their financial situation to their very young kids and creates a fantasy in their minds? Only warped psychos who donot think straight. I am all for children's rights and all that, but parents are in a position to decide their child's best interests and when your children are 5-6 years old and are barely on their own, they need not be involved in the decision making process as to their well-being, especially when the parents' good intentions are not under question. By creating a fantasy like a TV reality show, you make them a laughing stock amongst their friends and kids are mean and do not necessarily do them any good. You make them precocious and swallow pieces of glass in the process. These people, I tell you, anything to make the audiences cry!
10. According to the makers of this film, this film is very real and could be anyone's story. If this is reality, then at some level, I want to be part of it, because it's so glamorous and feels unreal (plus, I get an ubercool guy like Saif and for all of you, who think he is girlie or too metrosexual, newsflash...OMKARA). But part of me laughs at the insensitivity at which these people view poverty or people who live and die poor. Moneylessness, starvation, indebtedness, unemployment, lack of social security and all associated problems are real but their projection in this film is not. It just shows, how little these people know or understand poverty and its effect. Poverty is as alien to them, as is wealth to the poor. None of the people in the movie have ever been poor or know people who are. Their understanding of it is therefore, plastic....very superficial and its portrayal, although emotional is very very contrived.
But, I have to admit, that Saif and Rani both acted well, especially in the typically emotional scenes. They were very controlled and did not over do it but as I always say, good acting cannot salvage a bad film.
P.S- I still love Saif and his humour (that's still real, very urban and relatable) and Rani (who is still the best actress we have) and Yashraj, for recycling so many emotional stories for us over so many years, bringing in the moolah and most importantly, keeping the B'wood flag flying high (this is the only concept of B'wood that outsiders have in their mind and everyone is benefitting from it!) and I will continue watching your films, until you tire of making them!