Chance Pe Dance

I went into this movie looking for a lift of spirits and I was not disappointed. I did not have prior expectations from the actors or the director as I am new to Bollywood movies. The movie is gorgeous in its bright colors, beautiful people, delightful music and dance, and provides a refreshing and enlightening look at Indian modern cinema culture. The story is simple - the basic human drama of the struggle to achieve one's dream, find love, and be recognized by parents and peers for your special gifts. I did not have English subtitles and the flow of the beautiful Indian language interspersed with a bit English was enough to tell me what was happening. Shahid Kapoor was powerful in his beauty and dramatic dancing and his screen presence was delightful at all moments. His co-star Genelia Dsouza was graceful and lovely to watch. This movie did have a bit of everything including the kitchen sink thrown in the plot, but it all works together nicely to produce classic finding-one's-destiny, true love, redemption through the love of children and being true to yourself kind of story. The people who trashed this film I think just didn't get what it is. It is not to be taken as a serious drama. Chance pe Dance is an ice cream cone on a hot day, and stick of cotton candy, a walk through a rose garden in full bloom...a simple delight for the senses, a moment of diversion from troubling times.

Well it seems like Dance movies are the rage these days, and this week alone we have two films that seemingly centers on dance, with Jump coming from China/Hong Kong, and Chance Pe Dance from Bollywood, both being romantic comedies appealing to their respective distinct demographics. And it's not too surprising that unlike dance films of old where there's a male-female pair who would exhibit some signature moves on the dance floor, the contemporary films this week have absolutely none of that, which in some ways is a pity.

Chance Pe Dance follows recent Bollywood films such as Luck Pe Chance in having their characters lament about the open secret of their film industry, where one has to be well connected, or come from an influential family in the industry in order to have one's big break served on a silver platter. For the rest of the mortals aspiring for that opportunity, it's more hard work, toil and sweat in order to get noticed, otherwise it's an endless cycle of mundane work to pay the bills, and juggling auditions in between.

Shahid Kapur plays one such struggler from Delhi, Sameer Behl, who has spent the last 3 plus years trawling the audition houses of Mumbai in order to find work in the film industry. Living under meagre terms, he gets disappointed time and again, which is pretty much against the way he was brought up to believe that his good looks and charisma automatically meant he'd be the hero in his life, all the time. The narrative takes a very whirlwind snapshot of Sameer's life, highlighting his debts and being played out by both his best friend as well as filmmakers who promise him the sky, but never hesitant to pull the rug from under his feet.

The story tries to jam pack too many subplots into the film, which makes you wonder whether this is a dance film if at all. First of all, there's the school days arc, where in order to sustain his city living, Sameer takes up a teaching job, imparting his dance skills to pesky children (he's never good with them) in order to help them win their dance competition. The key message here is of course if one couldn't do anything with one's current lifetime, there's always the imparting of skills to the next generation for them to live the dream that we have missed out on. This story arc could have been better fleshed out, other than to be squeezed into the film just before the intermission, and then resolved right after the film resumes.

Then there's the continuation of Sameer's own struggle, where he has to learn never to give up because a life-changing opportunity may just be around the corner. In what would be like an American Idol clone of a dance/idol contest, this story too wasn't fleshed out properly and we're taken in for quite the fast tracking from the competition's start, right to the finale, with nary any tension due to the lack of competitive characters, and the larger culprit being the lack of dance (it's chance pe dance after all, right?)

But the largest waste here was the under utilization of the character Tina, played by Genelia D'Souza, a choreographer whom Sameer serendipitously meets, and falls in love with. The character reminded me of Asin's Kalpana from Ghajini, the free-spirited, strong girl who teaches a thing or two to her guy about what it means by being resilient. I thought Genelia looked like Asin too from certain angles, and possessed the same vivacity here as well, together with some really stunning dance moves that we would see at the start of the film, with so much promise that when the lead duo gets paired together, sparks will fly and magic will happen. But it didn't! If there's anything to rue about, it's precisely this missed opportunity to have the duo perform a lot more dance numbers than one which quite sedately celebrates their love for each other, by mucking around exotic locales.

For a dance movie, I wouldn't doubt that Bollywood cannot pull one off, given the musical like quality in almost all of the films, but it's a real pity that Chance Pe Dance is not that film. Thankfully the leads have charisma and share pitch perfect chemistry together, which managed to carry the film through from start to end, limited dance moves notwithstanding.

I quite liked the film, the best review I read was by subhash jha i recreate below- At one point in this heart warming journey into the life and trials of this Bollywood struggler a kid in the school, where our struggler-hero teaches dancing, wonders how their teacher ji manages to wear such trendy tee-shirts when he lives in a car and has no money for food.

"Arrey , those are duplicates of branded tee-shirts, you can get them at Rs 150 on the pavement," retorts a know-all kid.

That one fleeting moment sums up what Chance Pe Dance strives to squeeze into two-hour of fluid playing-time. The struggle for stardom is done on such a glamorized level of self-actualization so that the audience accepts these liberties for the pleasure of watching good-looking people look presentable in situations where they would otherwise appear unbecoming.

On the credit titles we see our struggler-hero prepare for another day of self selling to an unthinking entertainment industry, when one sees a slightly seamless splendour lurking at the heart of this film about a Dilliwallah's struggle to become a star in the Big Bad Bollywood. Clichéd theme? Yup! But sometime some of the most endearing truths of life emerge from situations that work in a direction opposite to the originality.

The fact that Shahid plays the struggler helps. It really helps. Here's an enormously watchable actor who can take away the 'acting' from a character and just make you look at what is being said and done on screen without the baggage of his personal life being carried forward.

Shahid's character, Samir, in the film is a struggler in all its shades. Samir, has defiantly left for Bollywood while his dad (Parikshat Sahni, endearing) is left wondering why his son needs to be a film hero in the first place (Bollywood).

Shahid goes through the predictable grind, but with such extraordinary sincerity and involvement, you suddenly realize the one truth about life's vagaries. Every struggle no matter how similar on the surface is different underneath.

Shahid brings out all the shades, nuances and layers in the struggler's inner world without bending the rules of commercial herogiri. This is a far better performance than it outwardly seems.

Whether romancing the funny girl-next-door (okay, a few block away)manifesting the disappointments of a struggler who's getting emotionally worn-out waiting for the big moment, or interacting with the kids in school(the director is almost as good with these angels from hell as Shekhar Kapoor in Mr India)Shahid just goes with the flow with a fluidity that goes beyond the dance-floor.

Oh, about Shahid's dancing, is there a better dancer in the film industry today? he slim but confident plot moves smoothly on the surface. This one is a rom-com with a pleasing pungent flavour of Mumbai's sorrowful underbelly hidden, but palpable.

While Shahid struggles for stardom the narrative glides along at its own even pace seeking out the wannabe star's life as homeless road-dweller who sleeps in his car, and smirks at life's cruelties.

There are very few characters in the plot. Satish Shah, Mohnish Behl and Vikas Bhalla who come and go like images seen from a moving train. Director Ken Ghosh keeps the narrative free of complexities beyond the struggler's immediate preoccupations. And that suits the film's moderate temperature just fine.

Some moments especially with the kids, exude the warmth like rays of sunshine peeping through a partially open door. Watch the sequence where the kids share their lunch with their famished teacher. Awwwww!

Though the choreography is uneven and the climactic dance, a bit of a disappointment, Shahid comfortably keeps us watching the predictable but perky progression of this penniless pilgrim from the backseat of a car to the red-carpet.

While giving groovy guru-gyan to his students, our dance teacher, Shahid mentions Michael Jackson , Govinda, Prabhu Deva , Hrithik Roshan and Shiamak Davar among the best dancers.

We can easily add Shahid's name to the list.

It's obvious to have huge expectations from a musical movie, directed by Ken Ghosh, who is known as one of the pioneer directors of music videos in India. And the hopes even rise further if the project has the youthful Shahid Kapoor (post 'Kaminey') and the energetic Genelia D'Souza (after 'Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na') as its lead couple. Hence, everyone was eager to see a spectacular show with probably a novel storyline accompanied by some brilliant dance sequences, melodious songs, amazing picturisations and tender love moments between the young couple on the screen. But surprisingly, Ken comes up with a very poorly written, confused and un-inspiring movie as his third directorial venture after "Fida" & "Ishq Vishq".

Right from the start, "Chance Pe Dance" fails to grab your attention as it straight away opens with a song coming from no-where. Even the titles begin after the song gets over, so there is no explanation why the song was there in the first place. Secondly, just after 15 minutes into the movie, a normal movie-lover can easily guess its complete storyline till the end and that's where the movie loses its main ground of the expected box office success. Based on a routine plot of a struggler coming to Mumbai, with hopes of making it big, "Chance Pe Dance" has got nothing to stand out as its merit, apart from the spirited performance of Shahid Kapoor.

In other words, Shahid is the only "Chance" for the movie to impress its viewers and I sincerely doubt he alone would be able to save it. The flick has several serious issues in its execution, which forcibly restrict it to be called as a below average project. Here they are for your consideration:

1. The moment a song starts in the movie, it shifts to a music video mold, which is no doubt the forte of its director Ken Ghosh. Though the songs are indeed a treat to watch, but it seems Ken worked more hard on the songs and less on his story.

2. The movie has a completely avoidable track of a school and its students winning a dance competition due to their dance teacher Shahid. The sequence, which is highly inspired from "The School of Rock" (2003), is not scripted well, gets hurriedly finished and looks like a misfit in the movie.

3. A director who can be called as the Master of Music Videos, ideally must have a good ear and incredible music sense. But Ken simply disappoints in this department as he is not able to get any good songs from the otherwise talented singer Adnan Sami. The music of "Chance Pe Dance" is a big let-down, especially with a weak finale song at the reality show in the climax.

4. It seems that both the writer and director are pretty confused regarding what their lead characters have to do on the screen. Shahid, who is supposed to be an aspiring talented actor, is more interested in showing his dancing skills than the acting. On the other hand, Genelia, who plays a choreographer in the movie, is given no detailed sequence of teaching the dancing steps to anyone. In fact she seems to be more interested in acting, with all her cute mannerisms and doesn't even talk about dance in the movie. Mohnish Behl, is the most confused one, who at first selects Shahid for his movie and then suddenly rejects him, without any reason.

5. The most irritating one comes towards the climax, when Shahid is participating in a big channel' reality show in which we are simply not shown any of his competitors. The viewers only get to see Shahid's performance on the stage (that's too a dancing one) and he easily goes on to win the acting contest and becomes a star.

In the acting department, Shahid is the only savior in the movie who gives a sincere and spirited performance which shows more of his sensitive and emotional persona. He might be counting a lot on this movie but may not get the desired results at the box office. Genelia as his lover, performs much better than her previous movies. But the cool and pretty girl doesn't get a well written role and thus cannot be blamed for anything. Parikshit Sahni repeats his fatherly act of "3 Idiots", but still manages to impress & Vikas Bhalla is a bit loud in his few scenes.

In the end, looking at the track record of the talented director Ken Ghosh, one wonders, why he chose this kind of completely predictable subject for his third important movie which also had the most sellable stars at his disposal. Was this the story he was working on, in this long gap of almost 5 years? Or the movie was a victim of an uncontrolled delay without his fault.

To sum up, "Chance Pe Dance", which was more publicized as a dancing musical, has only few dancing sequences to watch out and no particular song to rave about. The choreography and song picturisation does entertain you at times, but in the absence of some equally good tracks and a novel script, they fail to create a lasting impact.

Please give this movie a chance. It is really worth watching at least once. Shahid acting is superb. Genelia is looking stunning as always and acting is good too. Please give this movie a chance. Shahid and Genelia have great chemistry in this film. I was surprised that this film would turn out to be this good. Story is really good and its different. Genelia's acting is too good. I think she should do more Hindi films too along with south films. I wish and pray for her that she gets more offers for Hindi films even after marriage and two kids. Shahid has grown in acting really well. He has done superb acting in this film. Please go ahead and give this movie a try, that is all i am asking.