Just when one was admiring the spiffy professionalism of Aditya Chopra’s banner, Ta Ra Rum Pum arrived to take your opinion down the drain, thump, thump, thump.

Coming out of the preview theatre at Yashraj, one felt a dull sense of disappointment. Absent was the rush of energy that had accompanied the screening of Dhoom 2. Considering Dhoom 2 itself had not been great cinema, why did one feel so let down by Ta Ra Rum Pum?

For the first time, Aditya Chopra failed to give Ta Ra Rum… a definite USP. And that’s where the indifferent screenplay stood exposed.

Examined carefully, all the recent Yashraj products have been failures at the writing level but super-hits due to smart packaging, with at least one winning ingredient thrown in.

Fanaa — the USP was its casting coup (Aamir Khan-Kajol) topped with fabulous music (Jatin-Lalit’s last team effort for the Chopras before they split).

Bunty Aur Babli — there was freshness in the Yuva couple (Abhishek-Rani), along with saleable, commercial music (Shankar-Ehsan-Loy). Besides, the AB Sr-Ash-AB Jr item (Kajra re) was by itself enough to draw in a repeat audience.

Dhoom — the mean machines, John Abraham and the first time Esha Deol’s toned new bod was bared in a title song that can still burn the dance floor, were lapped up as expected.

Dhoom:2 — take away Hrithik Roshan and what did the film have? Nothing, carped a few. But why take away Hrithik Roshan from it? That was Adi’s trump card and he played his hand with a flourish. Additionally, Aishwarya Rai’s boldest performance to date (her wardrobe, her dances, her scenes et al) provided even more reason to turn the film into a gold mine at the box-office.

In other words, while Aditya Chopra did not give you good, classic cinema, he ensured that every film had one special feature to take it to the winning post.

And that’s where he lost the race in Ta Ra Rum Pum.

You had:

Car racing that did not give you an adrenaline rush. Yashraj palled where Feroz Khan had pulled it off thirty years ago with Apradh, where Mumtaz had sizzled in hot pants.

In Ta Ra Rum Pum Rani Mukerji’s thunder thighs were neither hot nor happening. But she was haughty all right, emanating a certain smugness that put you off. Apart from not looking the part (fringe and thunder thighs do not a student make), Rani Mukerji as a classy under-grad (oh yeah, you learn later that she’d bed and wed before she could graduate) was just not believable.

Saif and Rani looked what they are in real life — two tired beings we’ve seen too much of.

When Rimi Sen played Abhishek’s Bengali wife in Dhoom and broke into her Shonas and her mother tongue, it was amusing. But Rani parroting Rimi Sen’s Bengali wife performance obviously lacked freshness.

The music (Vishal-Shekhar), very un-Yashrajlike, was another huge disappointment. Even technically, Aditya Chopra seemed to have turned complacent enough to let a product with poor sound quality reach the theatres. Most of Jaaved Jafferi’s lines, for instance, were inaudible/incomprehensible.

The problem with Ta Ra Rum Pum was that it didn’t have that one special Aditya Chopra ingredient to cover all its faults.

By the way, if Adi and not director Siddharth Anand is being mentioned all over this column, it’s because that’s the way it is in Yashraj. Adi calls the shots, the official director is strictly incidental!

Hey, psst!

Here’s a classic case of the kettle calling the pot black. Is writer-columnist Shobhaa De getting amnesiac? In her Sunday column last week, she pulls up Amitabh Bachchan on the grounds that privacy is not a perk a celebrity can enjoy. However, in her own selectively edited autobiography, where she had made this unabashed claim to be a huge celebrity herself (of the genre of cricketers and filmstars, no less), Shobhaa had whined about not being able to even dine with her husband in a restaurant because of intrusion on her space by fans.

While her likening herself to a much-mobbed celebrity was laughable, if a writer wanted her privacy in a public restaurant, is Amitabh Bachchan any different for not wanting intrusion on his private turf? Sure, the media could’ve been handled with a little more care by the Bachchans and posing for one measly pic would’ve placated the waiting camera boys. But let’s accept it. At the Abhi-Ash wedding the media had the status of uninvited guests, aka gatecrashers. What rights does a gatecrasher have at anybody’s personal function?

Shilpa Shetty may get the max number of hits on her site and she may be feted all over the UK. But she isn’t giving up her Bollywood dream. She is so thrilled with Metro that Shilpa had a special screening for close friends last night (May 5) at Yashraj Studios!

Overheard a twitter that the stork is due to visit the Dutts. That accounts for the solicitous manner in which Sanju has been escorting Wife No. 3, Maanyata!

Bharathi S. Pradhan is managing editor of Movie Mag International