An off-the beaten track love story that does not go far enough with its surprises, Imtiaz Ali’s Tamasha is a film that flatters to deceive.
It rolls along smoothly, but so facile are its placid twists and pat resolutions that they cause nary an emotional ripple.
It is a pretty film, thanks to cinematographer S Ravi Varman’s lighting and camerawork.
Every frame is picture-perfect. And Ranbir Kapoor and Deepika Padukone are on top of their game.
Added to that are an intelligently elliptical narrative, imaginative use of songs and occasional bright spots. Yet, Tamasha is disappointingly inert and unexciting.
Its overly simplistic fairy-tale construct – creative and free-spirited son versus pragmatic and domineering dad – is given a gender-reversal spin.
Tamasha isn’t the story of a Prince Charming who rides in on a handsome steed to rescue a beautiful princess in captivity in a towering turret.
Instead, the yarn that it spins is about a gifted young man weighed down by the pressures of expectation.
His dreams of being a storyteller are cruelly crushed and he is pushed by his father ( Jawed Sheikh) into the domain of mathematics and management.
A mystery woman emerges from nowhere to help the hopelessly trapped dreamer to escape from the morass of a life he did not choose.
The supporting characters stay in the background, making Tamasha essentially a two-hander that is well served by the lead pair and their crackling chemistry.
But while the male protagonist has a clear back story, the heroine doesn’t. As a result, this tale about the therapeutic power of love and the magic of dreams seems rather lopsided.