Film: Any Body Can Dance
Starring: Prabhu Deva,Ganesh Acharya,Kay Kay Menon,Salman Yusuff Khan,Dharmesh Yelande
Director: Remo D'Souza
Producer: Ronnie Screwvala,Siddharth Roy Kapur
Banner: UTV Spot Boy
Starring: Prabhu Deva,Ganesh Acharya,Kay Kay Menon,Salman Yusuff Khan,Dharmesh Yelande
Director: Remo D'Souza
Producer: Ronnie Screwvala,Siddharth Roy Kapur
Banner: UTV Spot Boy
Music: Sachin-Jigar
"Indians don't have a mind to think,"
mock-whispers Kay Kay Menon, playing the sort of slimeball you thought
went out of style with Prem Chopra.
Menon, who once was a formidable actor,
hams it to the hilt as a kind of Mogambo of the dancing world who
thinks dancing is for big bucks, and also for big... well you know the
"f" word that rhymes with bucks.
Prabhu Deva, God bless his "sole", is
the other polarity. He dances because... well, he has to. He imparts
his skills to a ragamuffin bunch of street kids who seem to have
auditioned for Breakin' that street-smart film about using breakdance
as a form of selfexpression that came way back in 1984.
Indeed there is something very 1980s
about Tushar Hirnandani's screenplay which pitches the idea of Good
Dancing Versus Bad Dancing with a heartwarming sincerity.
Movie plots based on dancing and dancers
are rare these days. Choreographer-turned-director Remo d'Souza has
hit upon a winning idea.
Being a choreographer he is able to
weave the characters into a web of dance-related episodes that
culminate in that grand do-or-die competition that we have been
witnessing in one form or another since the time movies came into
being.
It could be Rocky Balboa in the ring.
Or the raring-to-go students from Prabhu Deva's makeshift dancing
school in this film...Heck, anybody can dance as long as the music is
right.
Remo d'Souza's film glides in expected
but never dull ways. It winds its way through a series of
self-consciously constructed road-blocks for the sincere dance teacher
and his students who learn, the hard way, that dance is for one's own
pleasure and not to show off.
Ironically this philosophy of dance as a
form of self-expression hardly fits into the the framework of cinema
where the very nature of the medium invites the maximum appreciation.
What sees "ABCD" through is its
sincerity of purpose. Director d'Souza intends to do a "dance film"
with a sturdy plot to hold up the choreography.
In that endeavour the film doesn't slip
up at all. The fact that it has Prabhu Deva at the helm certainly helps
to keep the show on the road.
As an actor, Prabhu Deva is restrained
and effective in bringing out the idealism and discipline of a dance
teacher. His thick Tamil accent is justified by the character's origins
being nailed to Chennai. You know when this guy explains the essence of
dance to his students he isn't faking it. But it's when the
choreographer-dancer's takes the floor that we're really floored.
When Prabhu dances time freezes. The
long pre-interval episode where he puts up what could only be termed
the Grand Prabhu Deva Tour de Force is the film's high-point. You won't
be poorer to leave at that point.
The youngsters who play Prabhu Deva's
students are passable in their acting skills.But I suggest they should
just focus on dancing as a career. The actor who plays the dopey-dancer
Chandu (Punit J Pathak) corners much of melodrama in the second half.
Honestly, the film just needed to get
on with the dancing and leave the mapping of a back-story for the
dancers to another time, another place.
For this one, all we needed was what
B.Subhash recommended in the 1980s. Dance Dance....I almost expected
Mithun Chakraborty to show in support of Prabhu Deva's shimmying
shishya-log.
If you know how to dance or if you've
ever desired to dance ABCD is the film for you. With Prabhu Deva's
astonishing virtuosity on the dance-floor to guide the characters' and
the film's destiny and to provide a centifrugal scinitillation to the
proceedings, there is little reason to quibble over the content.
Sachin-Jigar's music and songs though
adequate could have been more dynamic. Watch out for the number
accompanying the end-titles where dancing legend Saroj Khan joins
Prabhu Deva, Ganesh Acharya and Remo d'Souza.
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