Movie: ABCD 2
Director: Remo D’Souza
Cast: Prabhu Deva, Varun Dhawan, Shraddha Kapoor, Dharmesh, Raghav Juyal, Punit Pathak
Genre: Dance-drama
The reality show bug has bitten all television channels, across regions. Majority of these reality shows host either dance competitions or singing competitions. If you have happened to missed watching these shows, then ABCD 2 is your go to movie. With a performance in every 10 minutes, it is technically the Indianised version of the much popular Step-Up series. ABCD 2 is choreographer Remo D’souza’s second venture after his maiden film, ABCD.
Suresh (Varun Dhawan) is an aspiring dancer who dreams of performing in the Las Vegs Hip-Hop competition. He sets up a team consisting of Vinnie (Shraddha Kapoor), Dharmesh (Dharmesh Yelande), Raghu (Raghav Juyal), Vinod (Punit Pathak) and others. Vishnu (Prabhu Deva) joins the team as their choreographer, but none of the team members are aware of his ulterior motives. Will they be cheated by their guru Vishnu or will they make their mark on an international platform?
ABCD 2 is a movie about dancing, literally. Infact, that’s the only reason why you should watch the movie, for its performances. It has some of the popular contestants from reality shows like Dharmesh, Puit and Raghav; they have a dependable fan following and are quite popular among the audience for their own individual dance styles. It was a pleasant surprise to see the actor in them, especially Raghav who had a good comic timing and hopefully a bright future in Bollywood. Varun Dhawan and Shraddha Kapoor have trained very hard to match upto the standards of the other professional dancers onboard. Though Varun Dhawan manages to stand his ground, Shraddha appears to be the weakest performer when pitted against the team. However, in one of her solo performances, she has delivered a memorable dance sequence.
As far as the story is concerned, it is a sad combination of Happy New Year and Chak De India. The storylineby Tushar Hirandani has nothing new to offer and is often a bored repetition of scenes from other movies. Though the running time of the movie is 154 minutes (2 ½ hours), because of aweak screenplay, it appears to have been stretched infinitely. On the other hand the music by Sachin-Jigar is fresh and melodious. I watched ABCD 2 in 3D, in which certain scenes were a pure delight to watch on screen. But to be honest, I don’t think you will miss out on much even if you watch it on 2D, it’s just about the same. As a movie buff my feedback to Remo D’Souza would be to play a little more attention on the storyline as without a good story-backing, the movie is just a accumulation of several reality dance-show episodes.
My experience of watching the movie was indeed 3 dimensional- in the first dimension I enjoyed the dances, in the second I was bored by the storyline and in the third I was tired by the never ending movie. If you decide to watch the movie, be prepared to not expect anything more than some brilliant choreography. I had fun no doubt but nothing that I will hold onto for long.
My verdict: ***
