Review: Tum Mile
RAIN DEARS
A love story set against a great downpour isn’t all that it could have been – but it isn’t nothing either.
NOV 15, 2009 – FOR THE SECOND TIME AT THE MOVIES THIS YEAR, we witness what happens when exes collide – but unlike the characters played by Saif Ali Khan and Deepika Padukone in Love Aaj Kal (whose separation was alarmingly amicable), Sanjana (Soha Ali Khan) and Akshay (Emraan Hashmi), in Tum Mile, have weathered a bad breakup, the kind that leaves the ex the last person in the world you ever want to run into. But whether in life or in the movies, whether through the services of a screenwriter or that great scripter in the sky, fate inevitably has other plans – and so Akshay boards a London-to-Mumbai flight only to discover that the passenger across the aisle is Sanjana. (They haven’t met in six years.) The scene that ensues makes you salivate at the prospect of what it could have been with two really good physical actors (though, Emraan and Soha aren’t, well, bad) – but there’s enough truth in the material to make us overlook the inadequacies in the performances.
Akshay’s first reaction is stunned disbelief, followed by the time-honoured instinct to duck. But then that other time-honoured instinct, to stare, kicks in – and soon, Sanjana notices him. There’s a bit of excruciatingly polite patter, which leaves him with little option but to request a flight attendant for a change of seat. As is always the case in these situations, the flight is full. And he’s left with nothing but the little bottles of whiskey he keeps bringing to his lips. What’s worse is that Sanjana seems to have moved on. And the man beside her, whose hand she’s holding, is one of those annoyingly nice people you can’t even hate at first sight. He smiles and offers his name, and when he quizzes Sanjana about Akshay, she dismisses Akshay – within earshot, naturally – as “one big accident.” This is not going to be a happy journey for Akshay, not with Sanjana appearing to have ended up with the upper hand after the breakup.
And slowly we begin to see that Sanjana always had the upper hand – even earlier, while she was with Akshay. He was the starving-artist type – the kind that the movies love to foist on us, a Tortured Soul who looks for “Truth” in Art and who won’t sell his Artistic Integrity even if it means a warm meal on the table – and she took up a job and took care of the rent and the bills. (I found it difficult to picture Hashmi as a deep artist, especially the sort who’d go for Daliesque melting effects. I might have bought him as a rakish still photographer, though.) These princess-and-the-pauper scenes are staged with a sure hand by the director, Kunal Deshmukh, and Pritam’s music helps hugely to set the mood. Deshmukh employs these chartbusters as relief as well as roadmaps of the Akshay-Sanjana relationship. (He borrows the trick that Vishal Bhardwaj used to such great effect in Omkara, sneaking snatches of getting-to-know-you conversation into the interludes.)
There are times Deshmukh overstates the potayto-potahto contrasts between Akshay and Sanjana. He’s a scruffy dresser, while she prefers shirts buttoned all the way to the neck. She’s such a control-freak, she eats muffins using silverware and carries Post-its in her purse – though when she first exchanges numbers with Akshay, she asks him to extend a hand so she can write it down for him. (He’s so smitten by this point, he preserves her penmanship. If there’s a hint of deliciously smutty humour in the incident of a single man deprived the use of his right hand, it escapes the director.) But more often than not, the drama is nicely underplayed. There’s such an accumulation of incidental detail – her habit of fingering a silver bracelet; her insomnia; his stealthy smoking – that the sharply observed writing compensates for the aspects of the characters the actors are unable to locate. These are very real people – including Akshay’s best buddy, played by RJ Mantra, who chips in with the film’s loosest, most entertaining performance – and we take to them easily.
What doesn’t work is the interlocking structure of the film – the romance is broken up by a framing device that recalls the torrential rains in Mumbai. The story of Akshay and Sanjana unfolds in chunks as they are stranded in waist-deep water, in the present, and we keep wishing for the past. Instead, we are asked to put up with the high-voltage drama of falling trees and snapping electric cables. The graceless merger of sensitive emotional flashbacks and schlocky disaster-movie clichés makes you wonder if Tum Mile was summed up in the pitch meeting as Ijaazat-meets-The Poseidon Adventure. Even as metaphor, this device has little import – the central relationship is hardly as stormy as its real-life counterpart. (It’s more a question of mismatched grown-ups learning to live together, and in that sense, any relationship is made up of moments of sunshine interrupted by dark clouds and pouring rain. Why single this one out?)
Even the romantic flashbacks become progressively tedious (and obvious, with a cop-out conclusion), though it’s hard to entirely dismiss a drama where the heroine says, “Marry me,” and the hero hems and haws. She wants some kind of guarantee of permanent commitment before she upends her life – he wants them to relocate to Australia, where a terrific job opportunity lies in wait – while he thinks love is all that’s needed. (He’s not ready, he says, but then, when is anyone really ready?) Sanjana lives in the real world, whereas Akshay appears to live in the movies – specifically, the Hindi cinema of a certain age where love trumped everything else, and enraptured couples threw all caution to the wind before embarking on a life based on the shaky promise of together-forever. In films like Tum Mile and Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna, we seem to be seeing the dark side of those earlier relationships – how those couples might have turned out in real life. That’s worth a thought.
Copyright ©2009 The New Sunday Express. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.
Only if Abhishek Bachchah was here it could have been a classic like Naach.
^ Nasty comment that. Btw Br did you review Bluffmaster? If you did could you give me a link to th review please?
Thanks
Nothing nasty about it. Tum Mile is a disaster movie
Abhishek is one actor who has been associated with big budget disaster movies like no other star; Drona, Delhi-6 and the yet to release Paa are some examples.
r u saying there is heart beneath 10 feet PAANI in this movie? now that interesting even if things are enlightening only for some prt of the movie
“any relationship is made up of moments of sunshine interrupted by dark clouds and pouring rain”
That’s quite an analogy there Rangan!! – did the movie rekindle other memories from your past??
Nitin : Haha,nice one
Pradyumna M: Here goes.
You seem to have a special liking for stories about exes and the significant others affected by such relationships.
Is it because they are about as complex as movie emotions go or is it because you can relate to it at a deeper level
vivek: It’s interesting for me because Indian cinema, till very recently, was very broad-strokes. And now, even within the mainstream format, we find directors choosing to dig somewhat deeper, not going after the generalities of relationships but the specifics that make each one unique.
And it’s not just about relationships. Even if it were a detective thriller or an action adventure and the writing was more detailed than usual, it would interest me.
The film overall explores human relationships without the usual histronics.And soha ali khan does justice to the role.But still a certain disconnect is felt
1.Charcater are like pop-art(pun intended!)-doent matter if teh canvas is capetown or kodambakam.There was absolutely no sense of the characters in their setting(and seems to be a trend that hindi is the new international language).There was no southafricaness
2.Considering she is some sort of eco protester, she drives this snazzy car,lives in a snazzier home and just does not look thwpart of a student)
less said about him the better(like you said,rakish photographer would have been believable)
3.will somebody pls tell our filmakers that students abroad do not live such technocoloured lives-it rings so false
but then thats bollywood!!
and at the end, you just walk away thinking…so what!
Probably Emraan Hashmi is the Hindi equivalent of Ramarajan. Catchy songs carrying him all this way so far.
@Lakshman: I actually thought he is the equivalent of Mohan (the Velakennai (castor oil) version). Great songs, only romance and wooden acting!
but Mohan films were very emotionally engaging widout any overdose … Emraan’s cant equal that
Hey Rangan, wondering if you’ve checked out Illayaraja’s Paa yet. Is a Music review on the anvil ?
“Until recently, indian cinema blah blah”
You mean bollywood and kollywood ofcourse. Kerala did far better thab today’s bollywood in late 80’s and early 90’s. I admit you may not have meant INDIAN cinema when you said ‘indian’ cinema. But this needs to be reminded now and again to today’s bolly fans that the detailing, characterisation, writing etc that they are proclaiming from roof tops about today”s bollywood as a pioneer in india, is not new to people with exposure to real indian cinema. Always remember to say bollywood instead of indian cinema when you want to talk about indian cinema history and today’s bollywood’s pioneering ‘achievements’
And, mind you, they tackled a varied set of milieus and characters and themes in 80’s malayalam cinema unlike south bombay only bollywood of today – not to mention the complete lack of believability as commenters in this post have pointed out. Even tum mile with such unbelievable tardy attention to authenticity is given some leeway for ‘writing’. If I didn’t know better, I’d say the reviewer has some agenda but I know better and I can only say that baradwaj finding such merits in even average hindi cinema is like that friendly neighbouhood hottie girl of you teen age times falling inexpicably fo the ugly, uncouth, married mechanic – because he has ‘depth’
Deepauk M, pls link your post on koodevide(the bit about kanjirapalli christian line of mammootty) here. Let people know the real history of indian cinema before sweeping out ‘indian cinema’ history.
Vivek Mohan: Yeah, that Mohan comparison makes sense on another level too. Both have given exacly one good performance (in Mouna Raagam and Footpath respectively)
Karthik: Yes. But no review.
Like rottentomatoes or metacritic for movies, is there a site that aggregates reviews for books? Thanks.
//Both have given exacly one good performance (in Mouna Raagam and Footpath respectively)//
Mohan was good in ‘Rettai Vaal Kuruvi’ too.
I’m sensing that any undue praise for a Bolly flick is liable to curdle Raj’s milk of human kindness:-)
But in this case, he does have a point.
Even today, the average Malayalam film’s depth of writing complemented by a complete lack of artifice in the performances is a breath of fresh air after having your senses pummelled and assaulted by dreck like Singh is King, Kandhasamy and Transformers 2 (There! I’ve ripped into Bolly, Kolly and Holly at a go, call me an equal opportunity offender!)
Pity then a lot of their themes are topical to Kerala, they can’t do glamour and most of their heroes don’t seem to have set foot inside a gym their entire lives, all of which are usually pre-requisites to breaking the “regional” appeal of any film.
KayKay: “undue praise”? My friend, this isn’t about praise or blame at all. The typical sequence of events where raj is concerned goes like this.
I’ll write: “Tum Mile is an average film with some decent writing.”
raj’s mind will interpret it as: “Tum Mile is the best film ever made in the history of the solar system. Emraan Hashmi is better than Kamal and Mammooty and Mohanlal. Pritam is better than Ilayaraja. Tamil cinema sucks. Tamil people suck. And oh, Malayalam cinema sucks. So does Telugu cinema. And by extension, all those lousy Southies need to migrate to Uzbekistan.”
There’s no point trying to explain anything or reason with him. (Believe me, earlier, there used to be a lot of back-and-forth. Really interesting stuff, with reasoned argument. Now it’s just a screaming match.) We’ve all learned to live with this. I suggest you do too
Like rottentomatoes or metacritic for movies, is there a site that aggregates reviews for books? Thanks.
Yes, Metacritic for Books!
http://www.metacritic.com/books/
They stopped updating a while back but they have a link to other sites that still update. Personally I just find it easier to surf Amazon or look up the NYReview or the London Review for particular releases.
There’s also this site: http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/
“raj’s mind will interpret it as: “Tum Mile is the best film ever made in the history of the solar system. Emraan Hashmi is better than Kamal and Mammooty and Mohanlal. Pritam is better than Ilayaraja. Tamil cinema sucks. Tamil people suck. And oh, Malayalam cinema sucks. So does Telugu cinema. And by extension, all those lousy Southies need to migrate to Uzbekistan.””
(If there’s a hint of deliciously smutty humour in the incident of a single man deprived the use of his right hand, it escapes the director.)
LOL!
I do get the impression that you are a touch gentle with reviewing hindi movies as opposed to tamil movies. I would put it down to an innate association with one’s mother tongue that makes us distinctly uncomfortable with trash in one’s own tongue as opposed to a foreign one. Of course raj takes it to extremes but his rants are very funny and entertaining.
Well, where’s the screaming . You said indian cinema, and I just said you can’t say indian cinema without knowing indian cinema. You should have said bollywood. I also ventured that you might have meant bollywood *only* when you said indian cinema. Thing is I have no problems with you praising avg bolly movies – all I said was don’t succumb to calling bollywood indian cinema. You did probably mean bollywood only but you ended up saying indian cinema(wlell, some freudian slip?)
Idhukku peru screaming match-A?
I still have my opinion that you call average bolly movies good, good ones great and below average ones average but I didn’t even mention any of that in this post, did I? Until now. If you are a cinema lover and can’t access keralan movies of 80’s then you are more to be pitied than censured(just paraphrasing pgw here, don’t take it literally and say I am condescending!)
That’s also a different issuea. The only issue I raised in this post was generalising and using the phrase a”first time in indian cinema” when you should have said bollywood and kollywood
Didn’t you even notice that I said “bollywood and kollywood? That means, sir, that I was dissing tamil also.
So, your reaction is completely off the mak – I am not talking for si movies in this post. It is kerala vs roi.
I guess my previous ants biased you and made you to not even read my comment propely. Nothing wrong with that but atleast, I don’t react to your “previous posts”. It is always the current post and its contents that I react to. There is a lot of thought behind my writing, sir, if you care to look beyond your profiling and actually read the comment. Not that you have to just saying
“raj’s mind will interpret it as: “Tum Mile is the best film ever made in the history of the solar system. Emraan Hashmi is better than Kamal and Mammooty and Mohanlal. Pritam is better than Ilayaraja. Tamil cinema sucks. Tamil people suck. And oh, Malayalam cinema sucks. So does Telugu cinema. And by extension, all those lousy Southies need to migrate to Uzbekistan.”
Delicious.
Baddy, raj paavam…da!! Vittu kizhichutte!!
This is what I got from Googling :
http://www.theomnivore.co.uk/Book/Default.aspx
Oh no! some people can use both their hands !!!
Sivaramakrishnan: Reg.” I do get the impression that you are a touch gentle with reviewing Hindi movies as opposed to Tamil movies.” Could it also be the fact that I don’t “review” Tamil films? In that case, I’d have to strike a more balanced tone, list out the pluses and the minuses, and so on. In “Between Reviews,” I am free to talk only about what strikes my fancy.
But whatever you do as a reviewer, there are going to be people who fault you for your verdict. There were those who thought I was too harsh on “Wake Up Sid.” There were those who thought I was too gentle with “Pokkisham.”
Like I’ve said a few thousand times before, it all boils down to personal taste, among other subjective things. Agree with the review or disagree, it’s your prerogative – you’re free to say so in the comments, which I rarely censor. But there’s no reason for such deep-rooted bitterness and bile. This is just entertainment. We’re not talking about saving the whales or world peace.
Bala: Thanks. Interesting site, but a bit tough to search, no? Amrita’s site works better that way.
“But there’s no reason for such deep-rooted bitterness and bile. This is just entertainment.” U didn’t mean me right?
Baradwaj, even if you dont consider regional cinema, dont you think the older hindi movies (50s and 60s eg: guru dutt’s movies) did go a lot deeper within a specific theme and not just limit themselves to broad strokes as you put it?
And as a longtime reader i couldnt help commenting on raj’s comment: i used to enjoy the discussions you guys used to have earlier and gotto agree with your response here, but for a change i thought raj put across his comment in a more reasonable manner than usual (atleast the first part of his comment
). i guess he just cant accept your lack-of-good-subtitles reasoning for not watching regional (non-tamil) movies 
yossarian: Yeah, Guru Dutt, or even Mahendran. But I was talking about the more commercial variety. Like there’s a scene in “Tum Mile” where Soha (the breadwinner) hands Emraan some cash to pay the electricity bill. He forgets. They return home to darkness. (This is where you expect a fight to break ut — but no.) She lights a candle. And that gives him inspiration to paint (seeing her in that light). But even as he exults in his newfound inspiration, she sheds silent tears, because they’re so different. It’s interesting to see how this is handled so subtly in a commercial film.
And I think, by default, any longtime reader knows that I talk about Hindi and Tamil films only
Speaking of Mahendran, heard that he is making a comeback…Hope its true.
Rangan Sir – try http://www.flashlightworthybooks.com/
for book reviews. They actually create lists based on certain themes, with user generated content. Also Metacritics is reviewing books now, although I cannot vouch for the quality of reviews as FLW.
Hope it helps..
http://www.goodreads.com is a pretty good site for book reviews. Give it a try.
Whatever. The reaction to my post was so missing the point I made. Biinging in telugu etc in the reply made it clear that you didn’t even understand what I said. You stereotyped as ” he is against bollywood” when I had dissed tamil as wella idhukku jaalraas vERa. Lol.
Let me remind again the whole thing came about because someone sais “never before in indian cinema” when he doesn’t even know indian cinema well enough. I even admtted that that may just have been a slip, albeit a freudian slip. Idhukappuamum, ennamo baed words use pannengara maadhiri oru image create panna try pandradhu – ;hats-off:to you creativity
Raj: As someone who has followed this blog for quite some amount of time i can say,there are people who get what you meant man. Don’t worry. Your comments are always interesting to read and we get you that you are a passionate movie lover with some knowledge on cinema as well.
Now rangan has his own tastes, preferences and opinions just like anyone else.Anyway this is just one man’s opinion. Leave it to him man.
And you just keep rockin…:- )
ah.. exes collide?
you make me want to watch the movie. and that is just cruel considering it stars emran hashmi!