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Designer clothes, designer houses, designer emotions...

ZIYA US SALAM

DESIGNER STUFF: Siddharth Anand's "Tara Rum Pum" is occasionally engaging.

TARA RUM PUM

(At Delite and other Delhi theatres)

Life may not be a song, but a song certainly isn't life. Agreed? Siddharth Anand obviously sings a different tune with "Tara Rum Pum", a tale of a gritty underdog who ends up as a top dog. With a storyline as simplistic as a father narrating a tale to his kindergarten kid, it is nothing short of a miracle that Anand even tries to pull it off! "Save money... don't be a spendthrift... think of tomorrow... and good boys do win at the end... .": the film is replete with all possible moral posturing. Never mind that the film itself does a nice little job of plugging multinational products: Castrol, GTX, Goodyear, Chevrolet... . the camera faithfully follows them. All for some loose change?

Well, that is incidental for a film that is supposedly the story of a speed car racer - Saif Ali Khan - who grows from being the best racer to the worst, and back. Rani Mukerji gives him able company throughout, now singing, now dancing, now moping. But then again, it is not supposed to be just one man's story of grit and gumption, grime and glory. Anand has both his eyes firmly on the foreign market: so his little rich miss wears micro minis, showing thighs meant for a sari.

She shows her ample back and a midriff in urgent need of a nice cover. Then she downs more than a couple of beers too! So much for a modern Indian girl with a mind of her own! And body not quite.

Then Anand realises that his is a feel-good designer romance film. So his heroine changes from minis to capris and long skirts as she goes from being the wife of a rich man to a poor man's wife who has had to sell all belongings to pay off loans! Poor people dress up; rich people under-dress. Never mind that Rani wears the choicest shades of lipstick, mascara and labels when she cannot afford a slice of bread! And a chapatti miraculously appears in a city where everybody eats cake!

Soon Anand realises that his film with wonderful locales and able cinematography has to have just the right dash of pathos! So our handsome as a hunk Saif - he also wears his jeans really low as a successful racer and slips into cargos with T-shirts and bush-shirts when poor - out of the blue develops a two-week stubble on the race circuit even if he enters it all clean!

Just when you thought the director had enough oversights to outlast a film, he surprises you: about the only time this emotion strikes you watching this long-drawn-out saga. Saif and Rani have kids who move out of a mansion and into a one-room flat thinking it is all a reality show: a bit of "Big Brother" thrown in? The kids forget their uniform, and their bags at home as they go off to school. Just a couple of ten dollar notes in their hands! Oh, poverty has many expressions in Bollywood!

Designer clothes, synthetic emotions, designer houses. Designer poverty too! Anand's escapist fare has it all. What is nothing short of a shock is, it works! Not for the discerning. But for those numbed by the riches dished out by fate, not quite sensitive to the deeper feelings of life. People who don't mind spending on a packet of popcorn what many don't earn in a day, the upwardly mobile who speak English in front of their servants, and then come to watch Hindi films. The first half of the film is devoted to building up characters: Saif is a racer who wins it all: he is not born with riches but lives in the moment. Every victory is a destination in itself. Rani fights her papa - Victor Banerji in an inexplicable role - for her man, before and after marriage. All is fine until one day the champion loses one race. Then another. And like the film with cardboard characters, everything falls apart like a pack of cards. Without any provocation the mansion is sold off, the car taken away, the jewels gone too. And inexplicably the family that had millions comes down to counting every cent! That is when the man and the woman bridge the gap, help each other. He drives a taxi, she plays the piano to make things work. It is nice and involving even if we know that ultimately the guy would come back for one more round. Just as a boxer said, "the man who always comes back for one more round is never whipped."

As long as the concentration is on the comeback of the deprived, the film works. Even if Anand is terribly short on detailing, the actors carry it off. It is when the director tries to take pot shots at emerging economics that he goes way off target.

So should one go for the latest offering from Yash Raj Films? Yes, if you love your cinema bright and beautiful. If you like dreams and escapism, it is what the doctor ordered.

Take your cola, your friend, drive your Honda... and there you are. If you have a heart that feels the pinch, a head that asks questions, an eye that looks for detail, it is a disturbing film. A survivor, not a winner, here.

THE GRAVEDANCERS

(At Regal and other Delhi theatres)

The good old Ramsays of Bollywood are out of business. Horror stays in business. As a man shouted from the stalls during the Friday night show, "Yaar, yeh to apne Ramsay ki film hai!" (This is our Ramsay's film!).

Yes, this film comes with all elements of a spooky thriller that gave quite a reputation to the Ramsays in Hindi cinema.

Just for record, there are shadows on dark nights, doors open by themselves, ghosts come with long hair and blood oozing out! But this is an English film with a Hindi version, "Kahar ki Raat", playing with more prints across the city than the solitary English one.

The reason is not far to seek: It is all about souls at the cemetery: now when was that in doubt with a name like "Gravedancers"? The problem is it is completely, absolutely predictable, just an average C-grade Hindi film.

After a night of drunken exploits, Allison, Harris, and Kira are terrorised by the ghosts of a child pyromaniac, a murderer and a rapist. The youngsters, it turns out, had desecrated the graves of the ghosts.

They recited poetry, danced near the tombstones. The premise is too thin. Youngsters going to a graveyard for madcap rendezvous! That's stretching things too far.

There is too much damage done for an exciting climax to undo. Too much time lapses before the guys realise their poem was a spell chant that had awakened the ghosts from their slumber!

Too many people would have taken the exit route before director Mike Mendez sees reason.

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