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Movie Review: ABCD: Any Body Can Dance (2013)

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Anybody-can-dance3.5 Stars (out of 4)

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Indian production houses have recently been fumbling with attempts to make movies targeted at urban teens with disposable income. ABCD: Any Body Can Dance is the first film to really hit its target audience. It’s vibrant and fresh without feeling condescending.

ABCD follows a familiar formula. An adult with something to prove whips a scruffy bunch of kids into shape, helping them grow as individuals and as a group of friends. It’s Chak De India, but with dancing instead of field hockey. This isn’t a knock on ABCD. The formula works, so why not use it? A good formula executed poorly results in a bad movie. Thankfully, ABCD is well-executed.

Prabhu Deva anchors the film as Vishnu. Booted as the lead choreographer at Mumbai’s most popular dance studio to make way for a flashy new choreographer from New York, Vishnu contemplates returning to his native Chennai. His friend and fellow dance teacher, Gopi (Ganesh Acharyaas), talks Vishnu into staying in town for a few more days, during which time Vishnu spots some talented young people dancing at a religious festival.

The dancers are divided into two rival factions headed by Rocky (Salman Yusuff Khan) and D (Dharmesh Yelande). Rocky’s crew immediately accepts Vishnu’s offer to mentor them, but D’s crew needs more convincing. Vishnu must get Rocky and D to set their egos aside for the group to have any chance of beating Vishnu’s former studio, JDC, in the national televised dance competition, “Dance Dil Se” (“Dance From the Heart”).

Vishnu’s new school gets a boost when a former student, Rhea (Lauren Gottlieb), defects from JDC after the head of the school, Jahangir (Kay Kay Menon), makes a pass at her. Menon is great as the slimy director of the studio. Gottlieb, a former competitor on So You Think You Can Dance in the U.S., does a nice job in her debut role in a Hindi film. Obviously, she’s an incredible dancer.

The dancing is ABCD‘s selling point, and it does not disappoint. All of the routines — from flashy stage numbers to solo performances in the rehearsal space — are really entertaining. The 3D effects added to the big routines don’t add much, but they aren’t distracting either.

For the most part, the acting is solid. All of the younger cast members — many of whom made their names on dance competition shows in India — do a great job, as does Prabhu Deva. Ganesh Acharyaas overacts as Gopi, turning what could’ve been a warm character into a source of distraction. Also distracting is Pankaj Tripathi in a minor role as a politician in a neck brace who speaks in an inexplicably bizarre voice.

Another problem in ABCD is the lack of development of all but a few characters. There are about a dozen additional dancers in the Vishnu’s group, and only a few of their names are spoken in the movie. Director Remo D’Souza could’ve dispensed with a needless anti-drug subplot to at least give the supporting characters names.

Something about the ethnic makeup of the dancers at JDC struck me as funny. The Mumbai school, which performs a style that is mostly Western contemporary, is made up of Indian boys and white girls. There isn’t a single Indian girl in the company. There’s no explanation for why this is, nor does it keep JDC from being the most popular dance group in India. It’s weird.

What I especially enjoyed about the dancing in ABCD is the way the numbers refrain from objectifying the women in the cast, treating them as equal members of the company. There are no item girls in ABCD. It’s refreshing.

If anything, the men in the cast are the ones being objectified. The dance crew is mostly made up of young, fit dudes who spend a lot of time with their shirts off. As a woman who sees a lot of Hindi movies, it was nice to be the target audience for a sexy dance number for a change.

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Movie Review: Drona (2008)

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Zero Stars (out of 4)

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I’d been looking forward to Drona more than any other Hindi film scheduled for release this year. I am a fantasy and superhero film junkie. Maybe that’s why I found Drona so disappointing.

First-time director Goldie Behl took elements from popular Western fantasy flicks and tossed them into a film with a flimsy narrative, without understanding why films like The Fellowship of the Ring and The Matrix were so successful.

Drona begins with an orphaned boy named Adi living as the ward of a strict stepmother who dotes on her biological son. It’s essentially the same opening as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

Fast forward to Adi as a young man, working in his stepmother’s shop and covering for his incompetent stepbrother. It’s not clear exactly how old Adi is supposed to be, but I’m sure he’s not supposed to be 32, as is Abhishek Bachchan, the actor who plays him.

Strange things start to happen when a cheesy magician named Riz Raizada (Kay Kay Menon) comes to town. See, Riz isn’t just a half-rate prestidigitator with a fauxhawk. He’s also a demon. He sends his black-cloaked henchman (a la The Black Riders in Fellowship) after Adi.

Adi is saved by Sonia (Priyanka Chopra), a mystical ninja chick wearing an unflattering pirate bandanna and boots that look like garbage bags wrapped in caution tape.

Turns out, Adi is the heir in long line of heroes, called Drona, whose duty it is to protect the Nectar of Immortality from demons like Riz Raizada. It’s not clear on whose behalf the Drona protect the Nectar of Immortality. If it could save him from dying at the hands of a demon (as has apparently happened to all previous Drona) why doesn’t Adi just drink the stuff himself?

Instead, Adi seeks out the location of the Nectar of Immortality in order to protect it from Raizada, completing tasks along the way. After each task — each of which is supposedly the last thing he needs to do before finding the Nectar — he learns that there’s just one more thing he’s gotta do first.

Raizada, like any villain worth his salt, simply lets Adi lead him to the treasure.

Nothing about the plot is particularly original, but most fantasy films owe their plots to something that came before. The problem is that the world Adi is asked to step into as Drona doesn’t feel complete, nor do its problems feel imminent or even all that dangerous: two factors that made The Matrix so engaging.

The alternate dimension in which the Nectar exists includes the requisite magical dwarf and invisible staircase — but it also has locomotives. Adi inherits the Drona costume worn by his father, and presumably all of the Dronas throughout time — and yet the boots have zippers. Time and again, Behl fails to consistently integrate technology into his magical world.

It’s not even clear what danger an immortal Raizada poses to the world, apart from an eternity of his crappy magic shows. Sure, Riz has henchmen who beat up a few people, and he’s got some creepy marionettes who stabbed a guy on his command, but the magician doesn’t have a grand evil plan.

Such plot incongruities could be forgiven if we actually cared about the characters. I didn’t. Chopra’s character shows up out of nowhere, because, apparently, as there is a line of Dronas, there is also a line of sidekicks.

Adi fails to inspire as a hero. He never does anything to earn our respect or prove that he deserves the powers he’s inherited. It’s not even clear what his powers are, except that he seems periodically able to punch stuff very hard.

I admire Goldie Behl’s goal of giving Indian children a hero to look up to, played by a familiar actor who speaks their language, instead of superheroes imported from America. But Drona won’t cut it.