ABCD (Any Body Can Dance) Movie Reviews

[tech_genie]

ABCD (Any Body Can Dance) Movie Reviews

DECCAN CHRONICLE
ABCD: Any Body Can Dance
Cast: Prabhu Deva, Kay Kay Menon, Salman Yusuf Khan, Lauren Gottlieb, Prince Gupta, Dharmesh Yelande, Ganesh Acharya
Director: Remo D’Sousa
Rating: Three stars out of five

Usually for me, 3D is tedious terrain. The idea of anything between the screen and me, and enhanced, hyper reality is very unappealing. I like my films in 2D, and I don’t like them to poke stuff in my eyes or fling this and that at me. But when I heard of 'ABCD,' a dance film in 3D with Prabhu Deva in the lead, I was intrigued and really looking forward to it. So I grabbed my 3D glasses and settled down with my coffee and hot dog.

I was reassured. 3D is a bad idea, especially for a dance film. The camera can’t quite capture and convey fast, fluid movements in real time. What we get instead is a stuttering image and delayed comprehension. Apart from that niggling problem, ABCD is a film that delivers what it promises.

Like most B-grade dance films of yore, it is totally predictable and its story arc clichéd. There are haves and the have-nots. The haves are bad, the have-nots are good. Both compete and after some mishaps, missteps and heartbreaks, the meek take the trophy home.

Vishnu (Prabhu Deva), complete with humility and deep devotion to dance, leads the forces of good, while Jehangir (Kay Kay Menon), with hair sprouting from his face and grey eyes, leads the evil forces. These two men where once friends and set up a dance company. But Jehangir betrayed his friend and got an evil white man to replace Vishnu, his choreographer. Vishnu then finds a friend in portly Gopi (Ganesh Acharya).

The dance ka kurukshetra here is a dance competition — Dil Se — which Jehangir, with Vishnu’s help, has been winning for several years. Vishnu doesn’t have a studio or students. But both materialise, soon. But he is still not sure and often goes to the terrace of Gopi’s house in Dongri to brood. That a large angel stands in attendance always, listening to his dejected blabbering, assures us that all will be well.

I don’t know whether the Jehangir character is inspired by Shiamak Davar or not, but I’d like to believe that it is because Mr Davar has single-handedly sucked the soul out of Bollywood dance routines and ruined them.

Prabhu Deva is a delight to watch, whether dancing or just cutely grinning. Unfortunately, we don’t get to see him dancing much except at the very end, when credits roll. We do, however, see him mentor street kids, make an emotional plea to an angry father, and give inspiring speeches to kids when they are down and out.

The kids Vishnu mentors are all choreographers and professional dancers themselves. So the dance sequences in ABCD are all very nice, especially the one in the rain and the climatic Ganpati Bappa number.

Five-six years ago a movie about kids from chawls dancing like pros, krumping and grinding and locking and popping, and doing contemporary dance routines to match the winners of 'So You Think You Can Dance' would have been seemed absurd. But since we got our own dance and talent shows and since Prince Dance Group from Berhampur, Orissa, and seven-year-old Sonali Majumdar and 13-year-old Maraju Sumanth from Kolkata’s BAD (Bivash dance academy) Salsa Group won India’s Got Talent, everything here rings true, seems plausible.

Thankfully, ABCD it not Naach. But it’s not Footloose or Flashdance, and it’s definitely not Dirty Dancing. And that’s not just because it has a trite story, but because it has non-actors. Except Kay Kay Menon, no one here can act. So the emotional scenes, which must always precede cathartic, dramatic and awesome dance performances are missing. But I love dancing and I love dance films.

So for me it was very entertaining and emotional and I wept despite despite being horribly embarrassed. Because I know that somewhere today, in a small room, on a cold, hard terrace, some kids are dancing, fine-tuning their twirls and practicing their jumps and as they spin, again and again, keeping their eyes focused on one spot, they see glory, they see freedom, they hear an applause.
I don’t know how ABCD will do, but I’d like more, many more dance films. Because I believe in dreams and I believe in grabbing them while dancing.

 

[tech_genie]

'ABCD' review: Acting - Bearable; Choreography - Delightful!

ZEE NEWS

RATING: 3/5

Remo D’Souza’s ‘Any Body Can Dance’ was always going to be a ‘dance-ical’, if the word can be coined, full of sexy dance moves but riddled with questionable acting. And the movie lived up to that billing alright.

A very bare-bones story-line, which seems unsurprisingly similar to the one in Hollywood’s ‘Step Up’, is just the feeble thread that knits together a vast array of dance sequences and styles.

The movie begins with a stellar dance performance, in Bollywood’s first sequence of 3D shots, as Jahangir Dance Company light the stage with their grand finale performance at the fictitious dance talent show ‘Dance Dil Se’ as Jahangir Khan, Kay Kay Menon at his best, watches on. Their choreographer Vishnu sir, played by dancing supremo Prabhudeva, looks on from backstage as his troupe’s mediocre performance is rewarded with an undeserved winners’ trophy thanks to Jahangir Khan’s influence.

After the show, Jahangir announces he’s looking for something new and gets himself a US choreographer, getting rid of Vishnu. This sets the tone for Vishnu to stay at his friend, and dance instructor, Gopi’s (played by Ganesh Acharya) place in a neighbourhood where means are few but talent is aplenty.

From there on it’s all about Prabhudeva’s quest to bring together the two young groups of the locality and channel their energies and passions to produce something quite extraordinarily beautiful.

The acting is largely poor and is only bearable because there’s very little of it required. Most of the ‘actors’ are dancers or choreographers so it was always going to be a struggle on that front.

Ganesh Acharya, the rather large-bellied good-natured choreographer who gave us the dance moves in ‘Bodyguard’ and ‘Singham’ among others, does impressively well as an actor even though it all appears a little over-the-top. Prabhudeva’s lack of natural expressions is a sharp contrast to that, as he struggles to honestly portray any emotion that isn’t choreographed.
The more seasoned Kay Kay Menon is rather brilliant and has played his negative role very well. The rest of the cast, all of whom are stacked with dancing rather than acting credentials, were alright and did enough to let the movie roll on till the next dance sequence. But the really unexpected positive is ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ star Lauren Gottlieb who surprises with her acting and expressions, in spite of this being her first Bollywood venture and without having had any prior connection with the Hindi language. At times her Hindi was more fluent and natural than Prabhudeva’s, or even Katrina Kaif’s.

Dance is what the whole movie is about so it’s great that the moves are fresh and original. Remo has done a lot of work on coming up with new ideas and playing with the different styles and routines. The execution is also close to perfect, with Lauren, Pankaj, Dharmesh, Salman, Mayuresh, Prince and the rest living up to their caliber and even excelling with some unforgettable dance sequences. But one of the real highlights is Prabhudeva’s solo dance-off in ‘Down Under’ club where he switches styles through the routine and has the audience gasping for breath and clapping their sore hands.

There are, though, some concepts that seem to have been ‘inspired’ by other movies. The dance in the rain, for instance, is a total rip off from ‘Step Up 2 The Streets’, even though the moves themselves are probably fresh. The group running through the streets and over buildings, escaping from the police in the early portions, is also strongly reminiscent of the pacy French movie that propagated the art of parkour ‘Yamakasi’.

The music works very well with the dances and even the background score is better than average. The ‘Sorry, Sorry’ song deserves a special mention for its out-and-out cuteness in lyrics and dance-moves.

The much-hyped 3D comes across as scratchy and feels only vaguely justified in the end.

While the plot is childish and simplistic in bits and downright strange at a couple of places, Amit Aryan and co’s dialogues are strangely enjoyable and witty at times. The characters are also pretty well developed and the romantic link-ups work conveniently well without getting over-the-top mushy.

For a movie with a story-line so predictable and frail, it comes as a pleasant realization that the messages put across through it, blatant as they are, spread a strong sense of positivity and speak of wonderful strivings. It supersedes the mere framework of dance and tickles the society’s lethargic attitude towards dance and art. It puts forward values of trust, faith, and synergy among other things, all of which are used to metamorphose a locality and, by extension, could change society. Kudos to Remo for that.

If you enjoy some cool, snazzy dance and can look past the largely decorative acting, this is actually a movie worth a watch. I give it a slightly generous 3 stars, largely because of the overwhelming positivity in the script and the loudly subtle happy-ending.

 

[tech_genie]

'ABCD' Review: Any Body Can Dance, but the same can't be said of acting

CNN-IBN (RAJEEV MASAND)

RATING: 2/5

'ABCD', an acronym for Any Body Can Dance, should have been more fun than it is, given that it's a true-blue 3D dance movie packed with energetic musical set-pieces. But the film suffers from the same malady that plagues this genre everywhere. Like the "Step Up" movies from which it's evidently inspired, "ABCD" has a threadbare, predictable plot, and a cast of professional dancers who can break into gravity-defying moves but can't deliver a line of dialogue convincingly.

Prabhu Deva stars as Vishnu, the chief instructor at a big-league dance company, who finds himself out in the cold when his shallow business partner (Kay Kay Menon) gives his job to a fancy American choreographer. Encouraged by a friend, Vishnu decides to start his own studio in a rundown garage, offering to train young dance enthusiasts from a lower middle class neighborhood for free.
The wafer-thin screenplay reads like a laundry list of clichés, as the narrative moves clunkily from one tired plot-point to another. There's a love triangle going on in the troupe, a follow-your-heart message delivered through another subplot, and there's no escape from such overarching themes as the merits of hard work and honest competition. To be fair, you don't go into a dance movie expecting a layered script and character depth, but it's unfortunate that even the dance numbers in 'ABCD' seem interchangeable. There's one set-piece filmed skillfully in the rain that stands out in 3D, as does the climatic performance at a dance competition.
Yet, if none of it is particularly memorable, blame it equally on the disappointing soundtrack by Sachin-Jigar that doesn't offer one unforgettable track. The ensemble cast of dancers has an infectious enthusiasm when it comes to their moves, but they're woefully inept in the acting department. It doesn't help that director Remo D'Souza demands full-on melodrama from his amateur actors in the film's final act, and stays too long on their awkward close-ups in the emotional bits.
At 2 hours and 20 minutes, 'ABCD' is too long. There's some genuinely original choreography up there, but it's lost in a plodding film with characters you couldn't care about. I'm going with a generous two out of five for 'ABCD'. Even if it's true what this film claims - that anybody can dance, it also provides evidence that the same is not true of acting!