as the credits start rolling for Tamasha, you are left wondering why imitiaz ali dangled a huge carrot full of promise in front of you, only to pull it away when you had just taken a few small bites out of it .

tamasha takes you on an introspection trip which will connect with those who have spent a while in the rut of corporate life, and those who have perforce been doing what their head wants and not what their hearts demand. with Ranbir kapoor for an alter ego.

a fluidly-emoting, charm-oozing ranbir who has the role and the movie wrapped around his little finger. be it conveying the sheer frustration of a dyslexic trying to get his head around math in college, or the angst of his proposal being shot down while being typecast as boring by the girl he loves, he delivers like a rockstar (pun intended).

but the same can’t be said for the director though. imitiaz ali stretches things out a bit too long, and in trying to show the pent up frustrations inside the hero’s head, ends up creating a character of unexplained extremes. someone who charms a girl irrevocably during a week in stunning corsica but spends four years living like an automation when he’s back in delhi. and this when, there’s nothing seemingly that stops him from enjoying the freedom of expression that he so desperately yearns for.

and then there is deepika padukone who performs manfully playing a character that is shallowly etched and meant only as a prop for the hero’s struggles with self expression. although she does own the scene where she quite brutally tells the hero that he’s not the man that she fell in love with but someone who is living a robotic life that is a self-imposed farce – the titular tamasha.

tamasha leaves you with more questions than answers. about the plot, and about those parts in it that resonate with your life. but what it does really well is to leave you to find your own answers. all said, it does merit a watch for an outstanding ranbir, and some evocative-yet-catchy music.