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Release date:
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June 19, 2015
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Director:
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Remo D’souza
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Cast:
Language:
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Prabhudheva, Varun Dhawan,
Shraddha Kapoor, Lauren Gottlieb, Raghav Juyal, Sushant Pujari
Hindi
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The first half of Any Body Can Dance (ABCD) 2 seems to be
precisely what it set out to be: a tribute to musicals of the Broadway and West
End – not Bollywood – style, meaning: a very slim yet not insubstantial story
woven through a series of great dance routines. No better introduction is needed
to the intended promise of this film than that superb performance by
Prabhudheva in a bar to the song Happy hour hai.
And then it peters out
for a sizeable part of the second half.
In a film of this genre,
a complex storyline is neither expected nor necessary, but you do need to wrap
up loose ends and maintain an unrelenting momentum with your dances. ABCD 2 does not. In some aspects, it seems
not to be even trying. Fortunately, after faltering post-interval, it picks
itself up to do justice to some of the most fantastic dancers ever to be
assembled for a Hindi film.
No, ABCD 2 is not quite what it could have been, but it’s only fair to
point out that when the going is good it’s so bloody darned good, that I’d
rewatch it without batting an eyelid.
Director-choreographer Remo D’souza’s ABCD 2 is sort of a sequel to ABCD,
the sleeper hit from 2013 that featured Prabhudheva as dance guru Vishnu
struggling to cope with the politics in his troupe and the games being played by
a rival. “Sort of a sequel” because Prabhudheva is back as Vishnu but other
actors from the previous film return playing different people.
Vishnu is an alcoholic
and a genius who is pursued by disgraced Mumbai dancer Suresh (Varun Dhawan) to
train a troupe for a world hip-hop championship in Las Vegas. Suresh’s team had
earlier been thrown out of a major Indian contest on charges of plagiarism.
Desperate to regain his honour, Suresh courts Vishnu until he relents. The road
to the finale in Vegas is filled with potholes, not the least of them being
Vishnu’s past, but the central characters, including Suresh’s childhood friend
Vinnie (Shraddha Kapoor), refuse to give up on their passion for their art.
This being a film
directed by a choreographer with multiple choreographers in the credits and
several career dancers in the cast, it is not surprising that the dancing in ABCD 2 often boggles the mind. The
cinematography is designed to inspire awe towards the dancers. Particularly interesting
is the camerawork for the song If you
hold my hand, deliberately designed to make Shraddha, Varun and Lauren
Gottlieb seem like Lilliputians in a magnificent natural setting.
Both the cinematography
and the choreography are well-suited to a 3D film. In fact, the choice of 3D was
clearly not casually made. At many points in the film I felt I was part of the
audience on screen. On other occasions it seemed like the audience on screen
was seated among us.
The cast too is well
chosen. Prabhudheva’s elastic body is part of Indian cinematic lore. Though he
does not get enough scenes to showcase his legendary skills in ABCD 2, when he does dance he threatens to
bring on a national epidemic of goosebumps.
Varun’s films so far have repeatedly showcased his considerable dancing talent. Though it is easy to
separate the god from the disciple when Suresh matches steps with Vishnu, it is
still evident that this young man is one of contemporary Bollywood’s best in
that department.
The surprise package here
is Shraddha. We already know she can act. Well. ABCD 2 shows us that she is a fluid, graceful dancer. It might be
an over-statement to describe her as incredible, but it is obvious that she has
the potential to get there. In fact, it would have been nice to see a greater
focus on Vinnie in many more of the dance items in this film.
The star dancer of ABCD 2’s youngsters though is Lauren playing
the half-Indian Olive (not Rhea, the character she played in ABCD). The impact she makes is a measure
of her considerable dancing skills, considering that she makes an appearance
late in the second half. Yes the supporting players in Vishnu’s troupe are all
amazing – in particular Raghav Jhuyal, Sushant Pujari and Dharmesh Yelande –
but the one who chews up the screen with her moves during a solo act is Lauren.
Tere naam ka tattoo is one of ABCD 2’s highlights.
The centrepiece of this
film though is Hey Ganaraya which the
entire team performs in Vegas. It must rank as one of the most beautiful stage
dance sequences ever seen in Bollywood, complete with a stunning musical
composition and rich costumes. This worthy tribute to Lord Ganesh is a
brilliant Indian adaptation of hip hop which is an all-American freestyle dance
form.
I wish the film had
ended here. It did not.
I wish I could end this
review here. I cannot.
ABCD 2 has too many flaws to be ignored. Firstly, too long a
portion in the second half feels like a Las Vegas tourism ad. The dancing too,
which is stupendous until the clock strikes interval, gets sterile for a while,
with the early post-interval performances seeming more technically polished
than drawn from the heart. All that changes, thankfully, with Olive’s arrival.
Lauren’s fire underlines
a question begging to be asked: why do Remo’s films as director (F.A.L.T.U., ABCD, ABCD 2) have space
for only one or two women in large male dancing line-ups. C’mon Remo, women are
not exceptions among humans, they are a norm, just like men.
It’s inexplicable too that
in a film filled with lovely songs by Sachin-Jigar and imaginative costumes,
the director chose to end with a manipulatively patriotic number in which the
men are togged out in awkward-looking outfits. Their semi-toplessness somehow
does not work (despite the nice bodies on display), and the deshbhakti is just too high strung.
On the story front, the
film seems often to be on the verge of telling us why Suresh indulged in plagiarism,
yet it does not. How can a cheat be painted as a sweet soul without any
explanation? Was the imitation unintentionally done at a sub-conscious level
because he idolised the source and immersed himself in their work? Suresh and
Vinnie seem to think he was unfairly accused, yet they don’t say why. This glaring
loophole contributes to ABCD 2’s less
than satisfactory feel.
An air of suspense is also
sought to be built around Vishnu in Vegas, with him speaking on the phone to
someone about money being arranged, yet we never find out why he needed that
cash.
While the screenplay by
Tushar Hiranandani and Remo can be faulted on these fronts, elsewhere the
writers seamlessly inject sweetness into the proceedings, especially the Olive-Vinnie
relationship which threatens briefly to blow up into a clichéd love triangle
but does not.
Similarly, I just love
the fact that a big deal is not made of Vishnu’s roots. Considering the
cosmopolitan nature of Mumbai, it’s strange that there are so few non-North
Indian, non-Marathi characters in Mumbai films. From an industry that might
once have caricatured Vishnu, it’s refreshing to see that a song and dance is
not made about his being a south Indian, or for that matter about his heavily
accented Hindi.
It’s just as nice to see
notoriously non-inclusive Bollywood feature a significant deaf-mute character (Punit
Pathak) in the story. It might have been even better if we could have
understood exactly how he operates. There are actually some interesting technicalities
involved here, as I learnt from watching Neerav Ghosh’s Soundtrack starring Rajeev Khandelwal as a DJ who loses his
hearing, and the film on which it was based, It’s All Gone Pete Tong. ABCD
2 leaves us with this grandiose explanation: if you feel the music anybody
can dance.
If only a teeny bit more
attention had been paid to the writing of ABCD
2, this could have been a great film. Well, even with its blemishes, it is
remarkably entertaining. Now waiting for ABCD
3.
Rating (out of five): **1/2
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CBFC Rating (India):
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U
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Running time:
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154 minutes
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