Bollywood flick successfully rehashes Mary Poppins and Peter Pan

Sap makes maple syrup in this Bollywood version of Mary Poppins meets Peter Pan. The filmmakers take a swath of American pop culture and throw it into a Petri dish, adding a dash of Hindi mystique to bring to life this strange creature feeding on itself. At one end of the stick is a fascinating frolic through a magical forest; at the other, the plasticity of the world comes too close for comfort. In Thoda Pyaar, Thoda Magic—translated in English to A Little Love, Little Magic—a rich businessman has it all: the trophy girlfriend, the mansion in the suburbs, the convertible Beamer. Though he grew up fast without parental affection, he jet-sets to the top of his profession as television producer, notching award after award. But the wheel of fortune turns downward after he’s embroiled in a fatal accident, and the good life, as he knows it, is gone. As penance for his irreversible misdeed, the heartless Scrooge must care for a batch of parentless brats who slingshot him into manhood. The buttered-up plotline is pretty boilerplate, but carries enough jest to hold interest. Crowds will come with their kids in tow to enjoy a family affair that would bring Walt Disney himself to tears.

Ranbeer Tanwar (Saif Ali Khan) is a loner kid a la Oliver Twist, growing up isolated and unwanted. The opening montage reveals this oddball who can’t mix it up with the other kids yet flourishes in a career that whizzes by before the opening credits complete. Already decades later, the head honcho is suave with a chiseled (and hairless, as displayed by the extra unbuttoned poplins he sports!) chest and a fast charging network suit. Instead of enjoying another Man of the Year award by hobnobbing with his mortal minions, he slips out of the affair. This leads to his undoing as Ranbeer on his drive home causes a major fender bender rendering a young mother and father dead on the scene.

Instead of getting a stern sentence handed down by the draconian judge, Ranbeer is forced to raise four unruly orphans as if they were his own. The kids already disposed of every blood family member’s charitable offering of stewardship by torturing each with excessive trickery. Now that they have their parents’ murderer before them in his massive mansion, they collectively vow to send him singing to the big house as retribution.

Predictably, the film unveils a hokey blueprint where kids rule and adults are reduced to big animals that timber loudest when tripping onto booby trap after booby trap. Luckily, way up in the clouds there is a Wayne Newton-look-alike who is God and he has plans to bring an end to this nonsense by delivering to the nuthouse a nanny named Geeta (Rani Mukherjee), who is really an wingless angel with a longing to cry like humans do. (Cue the first music video, which sounds like a duet featuring Abba and Wayne Newton high in the heavens.)

Geeta’s mission is simple: Swoop in and fulfill the parental role that the kids are starving for. Geeta wins over the rascals and surreptitiously steals their new master’s heart. The kids try their earnest best to make Geeta’s job hell by setting her up. But the attempts backfire and the tarantula meant to spook the angel becomes a butterfly, the roller skate intent on sending her helplessly into the water becomes a magic slipper gliding over the deep end. The potty mouths and crude ways are tamed through proper etiquette with a little toss of pixie dust and of course some sugar and spice and everything nice.

The film fills its quota with at least four intervals packed with musical numbers. Each boasts its own distinctness. At one point, a primeval school becomes fantasyland replete with a T-rex, where animated suits of armor do the jig while reels of archived footage are reborn. At one point, a little girl stuffs a rose instead of a ramrod into a rifle as she squeaks a couple of lyrics. Another video fills the flaunt factor, as T and A are properly thrown around with 360-camera shots freeze-framing beads of water in midair and shuttling again as skin jiggles where it counts most. Ranbeer and his bimbo are syncing their mouths and their swimming while engaging in plenty of PDA underwater. As far as Bollywood antics are concerned, this number deserves a high degree of difficulty.

All of the acting is pretty high school drama class; and where would the film be without the gratuitous shot of the lead’s muscles (fresh from doing a set of push ups in his trailer) as he takes his shirt off for the third or fourth time to display what downing protein breakfasts and upping iron can do? That being obvious, there are some technical leaps that make for fun cinema. Clever time lapses, sepia-soaked flashbacks and animated dissolves cleverly transition one scene to the next. Notable mention to the not-so-proper, mullet-headed butler who speaks in Hindlish (half Hindi, half English) quoting, “Shakespeare was right,” as he’s rejected when offering a rose in deference.

The film travels form Delhi to Downtown LA to clinch a big merger. From afar, the land that is perceived to be utopia with its seashore and its palm trees and its Hollywood sign is offered up with a montage as if Axel Foley himself came back to try and save the upper crust of Beverly Hills from another white-collar crime. Then again, it could be a subtle jab at what America represents in the eyes of the distant world—heavy of sights, but lean on substance. The theme park of Universal Studios (pre-fire) is just part of the greater space that is just a set to shoot scenes and not much else.

Whatever the inspiration was to deliver back to the world a spindled fairy tale with happy tears at happily ever after, it was executed in good fun. The crises that hinder this film are not enough to capsize it. The repetitive theme music will play in your head as “It’s a Small World” does when you visit Anaheim, although the second-reading acting performance doesn’t earn it a lot of credibility. Still, there’s heart in this heavily glazed sweet that takes its fine time to swallow. And heart is one commodity that is hard to find these days.

Distributor: Yash Raj
Cast: Saif Ali Khan and Rani Mukherjee
Director/Screenwriter: Kunal Kohli
Producers: Aditya Chopra and Kunal Kohli
Genre: Comedy; Hindi-language, subtitled
Rating: G
Running Time: 140 min.
Release date: June 27 ltd.