Posted this in the ABCD thread as well.
I FINALLY watched ABCD!
And firstly, it's definitely a theatre 3D movie. If anyone's going to watch it online, that would really suck the life out of it. I wasn't expecting the theater to have even 5 people since Hindi movies are usually empty here but it was HALF FULL!
So I should probably also say that I'm a huge dance fan and I'm a huge fan of Dance India Dance where most of the dancers are from and so I could be very biased. What I loved was that not once did I feel bored. It did its job as entertainment. There were little comic timings, great dances, great music, and great cast!
The movie started out with the Dance Dil Se competition. Mohena's song was beautifully done! I love the 3D experience when she kicks the sand at the camera.
The chor police scene. Omg! That was really well done! A bit of it is shown in the trailer too but Saajan's back flips are amazing. They all really make it look effortless.
I think of all the dancers, Dharmesh was given the most screen time but Puneet had the meatiest role. He played the druggie to perfection. When he was sneaking out around the rehearsal room, I thought he would obviously be getting high again but it totally surprised me when he earnestly practiced his routine. And his solo was awesome as well! He's always been such a different dancer, one of my favourites in season 2. I wished they had more of a back-story for Salman, or a proper love story between him and Lauren. Out of all the leads, he wasn't given enough character.
**Big spoilers!!**
Dancers can act:
Anupama Chopra said that the first half was dull due to weak performances. And the dancers' faces didn't register expressions. I thought she would be right since they are dancers first. But boy, she's so wrong! Dancers, especially Indian dancers, need facial expressions in their dance too. I think Dharmesh did an amazing job as "D". His language as the tapori dancer was very convincing. Puneet killed his role. Hands down the best actor of the lot. Vrushali did really well as the "lavni queen". Noorin Sha as "Chandu's girlfriend" was really good. The scene where she breaks down and cries for him and later wears his ring was touching. There were a couple of people crying in the theatre. I got pretty teary-eyed there too. If anything, I thought Menon was definitely over-acting. He was trying to be uber cool but dude, chill. He was really OTT in so many scenes.
I also thought that Prabhu Deva's hindi would bother me. But surprise surprise! It didn't at all! And there were light moments through the whole movie between Gopi (Ganesh Acharya) and Vishnu (PD). The scene where he shows Vishnu his dancers and Dharmesh burns the minister's poster! And when Gopi passes gas. Light little moments but they make you laugh and love the characters.
Predictable?:
People complained in some reviews that the story was too predictable or not strong enough. This is adance movie. Dance itself is enough pave the whole story. But even then, there were completely unpredictable parts. I thought that Chandu (Puneet) would die of an overdose by the end of the movie but not get killed like that. I loved how they showed Dharmesh going into the rival company and later the negative character turned out to be Mayuresh, who did an excellent job being negative at the end and had the perfect evil smirk on his face.
Love story:
I thought there was going to be a love story between Rhea (Lauren) and Rocky (Salman). I'd seen so many pictures of them together on the official ABCD page and they could have had a really nice romantic song between these two perfect looking people but sadly, that didn't happen.
But there was more of a love story with Puneet and Noorin. And also Bhavna and Dharmesh's scene was so cute! Totally unexpected. I love how she was so casual about telling him that she loved him. I wish they took a little more time developing some love stories alongside with the dance but I guess Remo didn't have enough space to make the movie longer.
The music:
Before going into the theatre, I'd heard Psycho Re (which should have been part of the movie, not the credits!), Mukabala (which was disappointingly not in it), Sorry sorry and Bezubaan. I was so shocked that there were other much better songs than the ones that they promoted! Man Basiyo saanwariyo was beautiful. And Rhea's song called "Sun Saathiya Mahiya" isn't even a song in the tracklist yet it's such a great song! They should have made that into a full song. Remo could have promoted more songs but I think he didn't want to over-spend on promotions.
I've seen all the Step-Up movies and a lot of other dance reality shows, theatre shows. So maybe I was expecting a bit too much but I felt that not all of the choreographies were amazing. My favourite one in fact wasn't even by the main dancers! When they go to the underground club, the dance face-off team that they're up against were bloody brilliant! The final act (although hard to believe that the choreography was done in 10 minutes) was really good too. Bezubaan was great and Sajaan's flip in it was as usual, amazing. But songs like Sorry sorry didn't have amazing choreography and Remo could have put little things here and there with tutting, moonwalking, hip hop, etc. Prince didn't have much of a role in the movie at all! He wasn't even dancing in the final song! Even if Remo just had Prince do his signature move for a few seconds in some song, that would have been awesome! I think Remo had his hands full with directing and he should have got other choreographers to do songs so every routine would have looked perfect. The contemporary bits were amazing though!
On a whole I'd give it 3/5! A great clean movie to watch with your friends or family with kids too!
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