Looking back at Siddharth Anand’s Ta Ra Rum Pum , Subhash K Jha focuses on this slick, funny, khushi, aur gham slice of life film that released in 2007. As a bonus, we also hear from Rani Mukerji, who revealed she was ecstatic after reading the script, plus what it was like to work with Saif and so much more!
There’s a moment in Siddharth Anand’s Ta Ra Rum Pum , which clocks eighteen years, where Rani plays that clichéd sequence where the hero’s fallen-on-hard-times wife rejects a fat cheque from her rich father.
“I did the right thing, didn’t I?” Rani asks her screen-hubby Saif, who looks aghast. “You turned down a cheque for 50,000 dollars? For that sum of money, I’m ready to be compromised every day.”
The above sequence is a strangely subverted interpretation of that sequence from Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Satyakam, where Dharmendra’s idealism was weighed against Sharmila Tagore’s ability to ward off temptations.
Ta Ra Rum Pum is like a romp through the highest emotional summits of life’s lowest blows. Cleverly, Anand situates this rags-to-riches drama of a spendthrift car racer, his cautious and principled wife, and his two adorable kids (Sooraj Barjatya, rollover) in New York, where the economically challenged family moves from up-market Manhattan to downtown Queens.
Cinematographer Binod Pradhan captures the underbelly of New York and the empty belly of racing-driver RV’s family in a restrained rush of emotional adrenaline.
God bless his unfettered soul. Anand mixes the business of an absorbing riches-to-rags tale with many hyphenated homilies.
In the true Walt Disney tradition, the family makes the best of its challenged morality when it falls on hard times.
There’re moments like the one where Saif’s hungry little boy (Ali Haji, delightfully natural) devours a half-eaten burger retrieved from a trash can, where eyes turn to collective moistness.
You can’t fault the director for pumping up the tears. Commercial cinema is all about the pleasure you derive in bringing the fundamental emotions of love and life together in a clasp of a giggle and a gasp.
Ta Ra Rum Pum makes you do just that. Anand’s screenplay is original from far. Get closer, and you see scenes from Days Of Thunder and a whole chunk from the Russell Crowe boxing film Cinderella Man brought to us in vibrant colours.
Saif, I’d like to believe, is a better actor than Tom Cruise and Russell Crowe. He invests the role of the roguish, rugged, dare-devilish, and impetuous Fallen Hero with pathos and parody.
Watch him in the scene where he tricks his little daughter into staying back in their new run-down home as part of an imaginary reality show (it’s a long story….let’s just say Siddharth Anand knows Life Is Beautiful and not just for Roberto Benigni). Saif invests even the minutest moment with a tapestried irony.
It helps to have Rani Mukerji as a co-star. Though her make-up and clothes are all wrong in the first- half, Rani brings a thehrao and a emotional resonance to her supportive wife’s part in the second-half where she has to stand by a man who has lost his heroic sheen and is a bit of an embarrassment to the mirror.
Javed Jaffri replicates the role of the star-manager from dozens of Hollywood films. Though his penchant for doing accents (this time Gujarati) is admirable, he doesn’t quite blend with the fabric of fertile feelings that irrigate Anand’s joyous ride into the raga of richness.
Oh yes, the performing stalwart Victor Bannerjee is outstanding…. That is to say, he stands out of the script trying to give a semblance of originality to the role of the heroine’s rich, snobbish father done by everyone from Madan Puri in Avtar to Sharad Saxena in Pyar Ke Side Effects.
The huggable inspirational tale is buoyed by a bewildering array of songs and dances (including an item where the protagonists dance with animation figures), all choreographed to spotlight the sheer lightness of being a happy family undergoing distressing times.
The initial fifteen minutes could have been more inspired, though. The first ‘rave’ number, replete with hose pipes going off in the middle of the night, serves as a reminder of how trendy the traditional Family Saga purports to become in present times.
Nothing, not even the tepid songs (Vishal-Shekhar, what were you thinking?), can take away from the sheer weightlessness of the narrative as it moves through several superbly written scenes… take the one at the family dinner where Saif and Rani pretend to be satiated so as the kids could eat properly. And that one shot where Daughter, Son, and Dog stand staring longingly at a confectionary stall makes you wish all your cynicism would dissolve.
Feel-good cinema, anyone? When was the last time you felt so good watching a mainstream Hindi film? Replicating the current international trend towards making films that stress family values (Mira Nair’s The Namesake, Gabriel Muccino’s The Pursuit Of Happyness), Siddharth Anand gives us a slick slice-of-life served up in courses that go from Khushi to gham while your heart goes…tara rum pum pum!
A ‘moist’ see family film.
Rani remembers her reaction on reading the Ta Ra Rum Pum script. “When I read the script, I was so ecstatic that I called Siddharth Anand and whooped with joy. I completely identified with the script. I thought of my own mother, who has handled all of us through every crisis. I’ve modeled my performance on my mother. There are little moments in Ta Ra Rum Pum that wrench your guts….And I got to play mother for the first time to such professional kids. We had a lovely time because of them. Saif and I became children with the young actors. It’s a story that will touch everybody.”
She remembers she enjoyed working with Saif. “It’s so wonderful working with him. How much fun we have! Saif and I have grown together as an actor. Hum Tum was a breakthrough film for both of us. It got me my first Best Actress award. Hum Tum bonded us. He has come a long way from Hum Tum to Ta Ra Rum Pum. Even I’ve changed with age and chemistry. Saif and I are not friends off the sets. We don’t chat on the phone, and we don’t go out for dinner together. But on camera, we share a great chemistry. We’re very helpful to each other. If he’s stuck on a scene, he doesn’t hesitate to ask for my advice. I really wish Saif well. And I know he feels the same for me. And we’re very vain about ourselves. We keep looking at each other’s performances and patting each other on the back.”
And the supposed fights they had in New York? “I never react to rumours. The truth was out when Saif and I talk about the film. Do you see any bitterness in either of us?”
