23 January,2020 06:50 PM IST | Mumbai | Vinamra Mathur
Street Dancer 3D
Remo D'Souza knows how to make his actors move and groove, shake and scintillate. Given a majority of the actors in his films are dancers, the authenticity and realism are always taken care of. And that's exactly why the first ABCD worked because it had genuine thrill and pulsating dance pieces. With ABCD 2, he wanted to go bigger and brought Varun Dhawan and Shraddha Kapoor on board.
And with Street Dancer 3D, he aims to fly higher with the cast and the canvas. So the number of dances and dancers rise, and so does the impatience of the audience. The new film in the dance franchise begins with an impressively staged number that ends with a shocking twist. As the narrative progresses, we see one thunderous piece of choreography after another. And this is exactly what the film needed to be, and this is exactly what the film is not.
D'Souza fills the film with recycled and redundant jokes on India and Pakistan, how the cricket team of the neighborhood cannot speak English, and everything else one can think of. Dhawan and Kapoor's battle, reminiscent of Eagle gang and Bichchoo gang from Josh, runs out of depth and stream too quickly. The dramatic portions are worse, punctuated by slow motions and a repetitive background score for nothing but emotional manipulation. Multiple montages highlighting hunger and homelessness clearly don't belong to a film that wants to be the biggest dance film India has ever seen.
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And as much imagination the makers have poured into the choreography, it's a pity they couldn't come up with one memorable track that could force us to dance on our two left feet too. However, it's also to their credit they give Nora Fatehi a role that goes beyond just an 'item number', as fondly called by some people, and showcases her fantastic skills and athleticism.
After a point, Street Dancer 3D begins to echo the sentimentalities of Rishi Kapoor's Aa Ab Laut Chalein, hammering us with dialogues about Desh and Dil. The makers give Aparshakti Khurana what is arguably his most unnecessary role as an actor yet.
The only time the film comes alive is when Prabhudeva breaks into an impromptu dance on his most iconic song, Muqabla. In its 150 minutes running time, these are the only two minutes that excite and exhilarate. Which brings a genuine question - Why are filmmakers so severely obsessed with stuffing their films with gratuitous melodrama and messaging when they already have enough material on display?
In one scene, Dhawan asks his mother, "Why do Indians drag emotions into everything?" What an irony!
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