Vampire Owl :: I still don’t understand one thing.

Vampire Bat :: I know. This rush is not so natural considering the fact that this is day time on a Monday with no Khan presence or even Akshay Kumar, Hritik Roshan and those popular stars whom our audience has been appreciating so much.

Vampire Owl :: No, I am thinking about how American Born Confused Desi became Any Body Can Dance. Shouldn’t it actually be Anybody Can Dance and so called ACD?

Vampire Bat :: I think that they are talking about “any body” in which the word “body” stands for their dance team as a group. And it is also the body which moves.

Vampire Owl :: Do you know that missing a letter is still awesome? Like ABD of South Africa?

Vampire Bat :: I don’t really think that this movie will perform like AB DeVilliers.

Vampire Owl :: I don’t demand that much. We are only paying one hundred rupees here.

Vampire Bat :: Do you know that this queue is very large and the theatre is quite small?

Vampire Owl :: Yes, but I have counted the number of seats in this theatre, and according to my calculations, we will get through with around twenty seven seats to spare.

Vampire Bat :: You know, that sounds really weird.

[Waits in the queue].

What is it about? :: Suresh (Varun Dhawan) wishes to make it huge in dance competitions and prove his worth as his mother (Prachi Shah) herself was a famous dancer. His childhood friend Vinnie (Shraddha Kapoor) also has a similar wish, but their group is disbanded as they are branded as cheaters in a reality programme accused of copying steps from a famous dance team. Suresh wishes to go to Las Vegas for a big dance competition, and for the same, he and his friends hope to have Vishnu (Prabhudeva) as their choreographer, to which the man agrees. Despite an initial problem with the crowd and the organizers over their cheater tag, the team manages to win the competition at Bangalore to qualify for the big competition in the United States. But Vishnu does have more than one reason to go to Las Vegas, and the team has to battle their role-models to win – can they do that?

The defence of Any Body Can Dance 2 :: The movie achieves what is mostly expected of it, to provide those nice moves, some of them which are really amazing, and 3D makes a lot of it better. 3D actually takes over from the beginning title sequences itself. There is also a lot of style involved not only with those dance steps, but the way the surroundings are captured. The Bangalore dance sequence remains the best one in the movie followed by the one which they do against the team which they idolize. We have an Indian dance movie in 3D, and that too with two wonderful young stars and the master of dance, and it automatically becomes something we can be happy about, despite the flaws which can be found. 3D and dance – you know what to expect from this movie, and it is certain that most of the viewers have already watched or have known about its predecessor and they know what is coming. The ending is also fair.

The claws of flaw :: There are not many innovations or surprises with Any Body Can Dance 2. There is also not much with the story which goes on through the predictable lines. You can find too many things which comes quite natural to the movies as things start with the late mother’s wishes, goes on through difficulties in finding a teacher and team along with the financial difficulties to finally overcome them all to reach Las Vegas. Then there are also the extra additions which were rather expected, including injury to a member and some disease for another. There are also too many unnecessary problems created with the strange love triangle, one member’s tendency to run away and a number of off-stage fights with another team. Some of these things were seriously not needed. Also, the best dance sequence ends with the first half and it is not really the best thing to happen for the audience.

Performers of the soul :: Unlike the first movie, this one has a well-known cast. ABCD didn’t have that big a release here, and those bigger theatres didn’t have the movie in them even though the Tamil dubbed version did make an appearance here and there. But it is not the case with ABCD 2 as it was widely released and crowd has flocked to the theatres. Varun Dhawan does an okay job as the protagonist here. There is nothing special here but he is indeed good with the moves which he proves in this movie. Shraddha Kapoor is a joy to watch in the movie too, as she does some of those memorable movements – she has given it a lot, as it seems. We know how good Prabhu Deva can be in a movie like this, and it is once again proven. The supporting dancers are excellent as expected, and even the foreign actors do fine work.

Soul exploration :: The movie’s basic idea remains what one expects it to be – to have the lesser known or rather notorious dancers who work at random places for wages come together to make a big impact on a stage which is so huge that it would remain near impossible in the beginning, but so close by the end. The second half actually runs through things after adding some unnecessary sequences and in the end, there is no exceptional performance, and muscle show is the best that can be managed. After watching the trailer, what I was looking for was that dance sequence which was already over in the first half. A rise in the level isn’t there from the concluded half, and that hurts. A great finale was needed, even though “the stumble element” about which further talk would be a spoiler, could still prevail.

How it finishes :: We have just finished watched the Kannada and Malayalam versions of Mythri which told the story of another underdog, and here they go Step Up 3D with the underdogs of dancing. We are so much attached to such stories that even if someone tells us a story which is not real, we might fall for it. There are many motivational classes which find time to talk about one of them, even though there will be options to get them written from their lack of existence rather than reproduced from the presence. ABCD 2 is sure to work with most of the audience who are looking for entertainment, as even with its length and all the melodrama, the movie manages to make sure that there is not much drag. Whatever your favourite genre is, you have to appreciate the dance sequences and the effort which is put in here.

Release date: 19th June 2015
Running time: 147 minutes
Directed by: Remo D’Souza
Starring: Prabhu Deva, Varun Dhawan, Shraddha Kapoor, Lauren Gottlieb, Dharmesh Yelande, Punit Pathak, Raghav Juyal, Pooja Batra, Prachi Shah, Jack Samuel Gill, Tisca Chopra, Kapil Sharma, Ganesh Acharya, Navjot Singh Sidhu, Remo D’Souza, Jineet Rath, Pooja Batra, Terence Lewis, Sushant Pujari, Pravin Bhosale

@ Cemetery Watch
✠ The Vampire Bat.