Chance Pe Dance Movie Reviews

Begin the count....How many times have you seen and heard the story of the bechara struggler who leaves his home town with a tooth brush in his backpack and a bag full of dreams that can only be fulfilled in maximum city, Mumbai. And then, how many times have you seen him eventually rise like the Phoenix over a relentless period of struggle which has him being shunted out of producer's offices, battling with rejection slips, shedding a salty tear

The film industry attracts thousands of hopefuls every day. Most don’t make it. But the struggle continues… Chance Pe Dance tries to present the story of one such young man. What bogs the film down is that it’s too predictable. The story doesn’t have the zing to keep you hooked and it unravels at such a lethargic pace that it makes you yawn. The only thing you carry home is Shahid Kapoor’s earnest performance. This time, unfortunately, the shoddy script

Ken Ghosh’s dance-drama takes no chance in experimenting with storytelling style and ends up being an extended version of the music videos that he used to direct before making feature films. Chance Pe Dance is stuff legendary Bollywood biographies are made of. Sameer Behl (Shahid Kapoor) comes to Bombay with Bollywood dreams, struggles through the day as a courier boy and keeps failing in auditions for advertisements.

In a way, this film was always going to get made. `Chance Pe Dance’ completes the circle that Shahid Kapoor put into motion when he got his first big break. Kapoor began as a dancer, crossed over into films, and is now re-creating that arc in his latest flick. It’s also not entirely coincidental that Ken Ghosh, the guy who directed Kapoor in his debut feature, is back at the helm. Lately of Delhi, Sameer Behl’s ( Kapoor) current address is Struggler Lane, Mumbai.

A popular perception of Bollywood films in the West is that they’re musicals. This notion is only partly correct. Many are left disappointed to learn that the stars of these films can’t sing. They lip-sync. Fine vocalists behind those songs rarely get their due. Few know music composers by face. Dance steps that movie-stars perform to aren’t the toughest to imitate either. The leading man of our cinema is often not even the best actor of his own film crew.

Chance Pe Dance is yet another telling audio-visual evidence that Bollywood writers and directors are struggling to keep up with the new kids on the block. Five years, countless reshoots, one heroine replacement, severely re-edited music videos later, director Ken Ghosh has not been able to deliver ‘a Shahid Kapur film’. Yet again a script has failed a star in below-par B-town.

There are three moments in Chance Pe Dance that I can't get out of my head. The first involves a small kid, digging his nose furiously, followed by a tight close-up of his booger. The second is that of a Parsi gentleman in a sudreh, scratching his hairy chest and armpits incessantly. The third is a scene in which Shahid Kapoor scrapes his nails against a blackboard, the shrill sound of which is deafening.