Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic

By Subhash K Jha

Starring Saif Ali Khan, Rani Mukherjee, Amisha Patel
Director: Kunal Kohlil
Rating: ***

TPTM is not a great work of art. It makes you feel warm and comforted about the... Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic (TPTM) is not a great work of art. It doesn't cause ripples of revolution across the cinematic stratosphere.It does something even better.

It makes you feel warm and comforted about the quality of contemporary life. No matter how awful things seem, there's always that core of goodness in the human heart to count on.

This one makes you count your blessings.

Kunal Kohli taps that noble core, so elusive in our cinema. The last film which was as nobly-intended as TPTM was Ashutosh Gowariker's Swades. And Gowariker for all his acute sensitivity and storytelling acumen was awfully out of breath dealing with the child actor in Swades.

Kohli is delightly at-ease with his four child actors who have been selected not for their overt cuteness but their propensity to play the characters that they're allotted with restrain and understanding.

Each of the four brats, forced by law to come and live with the man who accidently killed their parents, sparkle with a spontenous credibility. Kohli treats the kids as young adults.

And he treats the audience wuth as much respect. He gives us what we apparently want (emotions, laughter, drama). But he makes sure his plot doesn't become a slave to conventional prescriptions.

It's not easy to desist from using a patronizing tone for the children when they are orphans trapped in an adult situation that they don't understand.

Kohli does a fantasy-spin where the sassy and spiffy words and storytelling offset the quaint arcadian story of the four orphans and a cantankerous tycoon who we soon discover is constantly unhappy on account of a girlfriend who only talks about designer clothes and Sunita Menon.

For enlightened conversation he must turn to a poker- faced butler (Razzak Khan), a business associate on the webcam (who talks in an indeterminate accent) and later the four children who are forced on his life along with a god-sent angel who infuriates him by constantly laughing in his face.

More than Mary Poppins Kunal Kohli is inspired by the Sound Of Music…and I don't mean what Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy have created on the soundtrack.

Saif's ceaseless scowl could well be a spillover from what Christopher Plummer wore as a passion statement way back in the 1960s in the Roger & Hammerstein musical.

And Rani Mukherjee could be a desi Julie Andrews popping out of a cottony heaven run by a 'God' who looks a lot like Rishi Kapoor.

The idyllic theme often takes off into a realm of commodious fantasy with children prancing with animals, both real and computerized, in what could happily be seen as a modernday interpretation of Gulzar's Parichay.

TPTM leaves you with a feeling of warmth and wellbeing. TPTM is an all's-well-with-the-world anthem on celluloid sung at a pitch that pointedly avoids the higher notes and scales some sweet tender octaves in tones that sound like paens to heaven.

More than anything else TPTM bowls you over its nobility of purpose. Though inured in the condensed milk of human kindness the narration never plummets into becoming an occasion to flaunt some jaundiced utopia.

Not even when Kunal, very bravely inspired by Raj Kumar Hirani brings footage of the real-life Gandhiji into the narration.

That's when our heavesent 'Munnibai' goes for the kill. Rani Mukherjee creates an aura of mischievous artlessness around the angel's role. Saif is all scowls and pursed lips. But nonetheless emotive in parts. Amisha Patel's benign bimbo's act depends more on styling than substance.

Sudeep Chatterjee's camerawork is gloriously wedded to gloss. Every hair on the head glistens with glamour.

Every scowl is on the prowl for perfection.

This is a film that no one can hate. It doesn't have a single 'bad' character, not even badly-written characters. In just two sequences Sharat Saxena as the legal eagle lets you know all we need or want to know about his life.

The children tell us the rest.