Chance Pe Dance (2010)

New love convinces a struggling actor and dancer to enter a talent competition that could make him a superstar.

Director:

Ken Ghosh

Writers:

Nupur Asthana (screenplay), Manu Rishi Chadha (additional dialogue) (as Manu Rishi)

Stars:

Shahid Kapoor, Genelia D'Souza, Mohnish Bahl

Cast

Credited cast:
Shahid Kapoor	...	Sameer Behl
Genelia D'Souza	...	Tina Sharma (as Genelia)
Mohnish Bahl	...	Rajeev Sharma
Satish Shah	...	School Principal
Parikshat Sahni	...	Mr. Behl (as Parikshit Sahani)
Vikas Bhalla	...	Gaurav
Kurush Deboo	...	Kershi(Sameer's landlord) (as Kurush Debu)
Bizz Kanwarpal
Mannu Rishi
Zain Khan	...	Tina's brother
Aditi Bhatia
Zico Saigal	...	(as Anirudh 'Zico' Saigal)
Shiven Jain
Charvi Shukla
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Vrajesh Hirjee

Storyline

Delhi-based Mrs. Behl believes her son, Sameer, will make a mark for himself as a Bollywood hero much to the chagrin of her husband. Believing his mother, who subsequently passes away, Sameer relocates to Mumbai, ends up auditioning numerous times, nearly makes it but is replaced at the 11th hour. Despite working as a courier delivery-man, he is unable to pay his rent and is evicted by his landlord's brother. He ends up as Dance Teacher in Model High School, sneaks every morning into the school to use it's facilities and lives in his car while romancing cute choreographer Tina Sharma. Meeting Rajeev Sharma, he is promised a lead role in a movie but later finds he has to compete in a nation-wide contest. Disillusioned at this rejection, he despairs but is encouraged by Tina. It is then he receives bad news about his dad and decides he must return immediately, perhaps never to fulfill his late mother's dream.

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Plot Keywords:

school | courier | piggy back ride | candle | cheerleader | 

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Genres:

Comedy | Drama | Musical | Romance

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Details

Official Sites:

Official site

Country:

India

Language:

Hindi Urdu

Release Date:

15 January 2010 (India)

Also Known As:

Yahoo

Box Office

Opening Weekend USA:

$130,160, 17 January 2010, Limited Release

Gross USA:

$164,188, 24 January 2010

Company Credits

Production Co:

UTV Motion Pictures

Technical Specs

Runtime:

122 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Did You Know?

Trivia

The movie was originally to be named "Yahoo", but yahoo.com wouldn't give producers the rights.

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Quotes

Tina Sharma: A little more attitude. Hold your back straight. Feel... feel the music.

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Connections

References The Kid (1921)

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Soundtracks

Yaba Daba Yahoo
Written by Irfan Siddiqui
Composed by Adnan Sami
Performed by Kunal Ganjawala
Courtesy of Super Cassettes Industries Limited (T-Series)

User Reviews

A Nutshell Review: Chance Pe Dance

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.