ABCD 2
Year: 2015
Director: Remo Fernandes
Cast: Varun Dhawan, Shraddha Kapoor, Lauren Gottlieb, Prabhu Deva

In 2013, choreographer-turned-director Reo Fernandes made ABCD (Anybody Can Dance), a small budget film that became a surprise hit without any star presence. Now two years later Remo dishes out the second helping, This time around he gets a bigger budget (from none other than Disney!) and bigger stars to flaunt on a much bigger stage- and that too in 3D. But does this ‘bigger’ reprise work well?

What’s the plot?

A small-time Mumbai-based dance troupe is disqualified from the finals of a popular TV competition for blatantly copying moves from a foreign choreographer. The disgraced lead dancer (Varun Dhawan), egged on by his girl-friend (Shaddha Kapoor), now sets his heart on redemption by winning an international hip-hop dance competition in Las Vegas. To do that he would need to rope in an extremely talented but a drunkard and failed choreographer (Prabhu Deva) and also build up his dancing troupe once again. Will he manage to do these things? Or are there going to be many more obstacles in his path?

What’s hot?

·        The lead pair looks good together. Both Varun Dhawan and Shraddha Kapoor must be lauded for going all out to get the complex dance steps right.

·        Lauren Gottlieb, who also starred in the original ABCD, makes her small role count through some electric dancing.

·        Some exceptional dance sequences.

What’s not?

·        A disjointed narrative with a wafer-thin plot and ill-etched characters.

·        Prabhu Deva’s central character (who made the first ABCD so memorable!) is made ineffective through some unimaginative, unconvincing writing.

·        Multiple lavishly mounted song-and-dance sequences look repetitive and sound jarring, losing their edge in the process.

.        No memorable songs.

Verdict

The original ABCD scored despite its flaws because it showed a lot of heart, felt real and made you connect to the characters. This second edition doesn’t manage to do any one of these things. It just is a bloated, big budgeted dance-themed entertainer that feels amateurish and manipulative. Only the lack of any worthy alternative at the box office can explain its good going out there!

Rating

1.5 stars