Tarla movie review: Where’s the food in Huma Qureshi-starrer about India’s kitchen queen?

The two-hour film is saved from being a drag with Hashmi’s terrific turn as a traditional home-grown husband who thinks he is being progressive, but who expects to be acknowledged and thanked at every turn. Qureshi as Tarla is efficient and pleasant but never quite as flavourful as we would have liked her to be. And this makes the film even more by-the-numbers than it should have been.

The connection that the film makes between Tarla’s own story and the agency that women should have to carve their own paths is a good thing, but the obvious ways in which this fact is hammered in becomes tiresome. Nalin, or Nallu as Tarla calls him lovingly, gets to lecture his wife on how she left a sick child home to go off and shoot her TV show pilot: if the film had really been on her side, she wouldn’t have been painted as the bad guy for so long. Of course, he has a change of heart, and that comes in a speech in which he hands all credit to Tarla, but only after the film has had enough time to wag a finger at the central character.

And that brings me back to my original grouse: where, oh where, is the food? All the glorious food, which Tarla Dalal’s recipes made so easy to cook?

Tarla movie director: Piyush Gupta
Tarla movie cast: Huma Qureshi, Sharib Hashmi, Bharti Achrekar, Veenah Nair
Tarla movie star rating: 2 stars