Ta Ra Rum Pum

No major spoilers ahead. :-)

Its been movie-time here at San Diego and 'Ta Ra Rum Pum' happened purely by chance. Lazing arond on a Sunday afternoon, Sandy and I decided to check out if there were any Desi movies. And we chanced upon this one. I was certain that we weren't going to get tickets for the show an hour later. And it was a PayPal deal. Before I knew how, we had tickets and we rushed...

The Desi public had turned up in fullflow for this brand-new movie. I barely knew anything about the movie and had no expectations whatsoever. This was probably the YashRaj's next movie after Dhoom II. So, I thought we could expect another movie full of exotic locations, extravagant clothing n accessories, etc. But I was pleasantly surprised to see that the movie was all set in New York (with a hint of Mumbai here n there) and was paced pretty swiftly. There was no drag between the "love-at-first-sight" (or close) to marriage to kids.. Or the story from tyre-changer - ace racer... The whole race thing had the audience's adrenaline racing.. And the couple of Saif n Rani reuniting after Hum Tum couldnt have been cuter. I was pleasantly surprised at the subtle make-up that the two had on so much that you could see the freckles on Rani's nose. It was natural.

As in all stories, something had to go wrong and the ace-racer becomes a 'loser' and the rich lifetsyle gives way to poverty. And the protective parents tell the kids that they are a part of a reality show in which they had to live on a budget to win a fictitious reward. The kids called Princess and Champ (never revealed if these were nicknames or not) are sweet but annoying sometimes. And as poverty strikes, the man loses is values and stoops to low levels to try and save the family he loves. To cut a long story short, through a quirk of fate, his morals fall in the right place and then follows the rise of the phoenix from the ashes. The movie actually is very 'child-friendly' and is very enjoyable for kids with an animated song n everything. And in fact the whole movie is narrated by a child and so is all in all a "family movie".

All in all, the movie is definitely worth a watch,a chick-flick feel to it, some catchy songs, a fast-paced entertainer and a pleasant family movie with an underlying theme for kids to 'save' the day... which is revealed through the movie.