Tamasha Movie Review: This Tamasha Spreads Nirasha

Imtiaz Ali has made a career out of weaving love stories set against the backdrop of journeys and when it was announced that Imtiaz is bringing former lovers Ranbir Kapoor and Deepika Padukone together for Tamasha, it was but natural for expectations to be sky-high. However, unfortunately, Tamasha has proved to be the undoing of the hit trio.

Happy-go-lucky and romantic Tara (Deepika Padukone) lands in Corsica because she has read about the place in Asterix comics and runs into Ved (Ranbir Kapoor), a mysterious traveller, who makes a pact with her to not tell anything about each other for the duration of their week-long stay in Corsica.

Tara jumps at the idea and the duo spend the rest of their week behaving like unsupervised kids on a picnic before parting and going their separate ways. Ved goes back to his life, but Tara pines for him and with some crafty deductions that would make Sherlock Holmes proud, traces him to Delhi after a few years.

However, to her shock, Tara discovers that Ved is not the fun-loving bohemian that she had encountered in Corsisa, but a mediocre and boring corporate drone. Hearts break, tears flow and the two part ways again, discover themselves and decide that they are still very much in love with each other (Yawn).

This reviewer has always believed that Ranbir has potential, but the lad needs to stop repeating his 'confused young man in need of self-discovery' roles and strive to bring something new to the table for survival. The Rockstar does impress in the scene where he opens up to his family, but that is all. Deepika looks pretty enough but she lacks charm and oomph. Her character too has not been finely etched and the way she obsesses about Ved in the second half and insists on being with him despite Ved pushing her away seems quite stalker-ish.

I have no idea what chemistry the PR machinery kept hollering about because there is hardly any between Ranbir and Deepika. The fact that Tara starts passionately loving Ved after spending a platonic week with him (with the exception of an intimate encounter before parting) is quite laughable. The two might as well have been cousins with their chaste behavior- not that we wanted some steamy scenes, but where was the slowly building romance, the loving glances, the shy touches, the soft smiles as Cupid's arrow strikes? Also, the fact that Tara decides to spend seven days on a strange island with a man, who refuses to tell anything about himself (He could have been a psycho rapist for all you know!) is something quite tough to digest.

The first half of the film seems to be totally sponsored by the Tourism department of Corsica and if Ali thought he could pull wool over our eyes by showing us exotic locales, he was mistaken. In the absence of a strong storyline, the first half looks like a promotional video exhorting viewers to drop everything and book a flight to Corsica.

The second half has a lot of 'rona-dhona' after Tara dumps Ved and the latter starts behaving like a schizophrenic and basically scares the crap out of everyone associated with him. There is also the 'done to death' scene urging people to choose between what they want and what the world wants from them as Ved sets out to discover himself.

The only good thing that can be said about the film is the way it has been shot. Cinematographer Ravi Varman does credit to the genteel lanes of Shimla and the sun-kissed streets of Corsica. The music is not bad as such and had the two been accompanied by a good story, Tamasha could have surely been a delight.