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

Jiah Khan was actually Shahid's original co-star and shot half of the film, but was asked to leave because she was reportedly getting over-friendly with Shahid and was just not doing her job well.

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Quotes

Mr. Behl: [phoning his son] You know what? This has been going on for the last three years.
Sameer Behl: Yes, Dad.
Mr. Behl: You said it was for a year. "If I don't make it in a year, I'll be back." Isn't that what you said?
Sameer Behl: Yes, Dad.
Mr. Behl: One year turned into three and what have you done?

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Connections

References Last Tango in Paris (1972)

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Soundtracks

Rishta Hai Mera
Written by Irfan Siddiqui
Composed by Adnan Sami
Performed by Shaan and Tulsi Kumar
Courtesy of Super Cassettes Industries Limited (T-Series)

User Reviews

Nothing new in Ken Ghosh's much awaited musical.

It's obvious to have huge expectations from a musical movie, directed by Ken Ghosh, who is known as one of the pioneer directors of music videos in India. And the hopes even rise further if the project has the youthful Shahid Kapoor (post 'Kaminey') and the energetic Genelia D'Souza (after 'Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na') as its lead couple. Hence, everyone was eager to see a spectacular show with probably a novel storyline accompanied by some brilliant dance sequences, melodious songs, amazing picturisations and tender love moments between the young couple on the screen. But surprisingly, Ken comes up with a very poorly written, confused and un-inspiring movie as his third directorial venture after "Fida" & "Ishq Vishq".

Right from the start, "Chance Pe Dance" fails to grab your attention as it straight away opens with a song coming from no-where. Even the titles begin after the song gets over, so there is no explanation why the song was there in the first place. Secondly, just after 15 minutes into the movie, a normal movie-lover can easily guess its complete storyline till the end and that's where the movie loses its main ground of the expected box office success. Based on a routine plot of a struggler coming to Mumbai, with hopes of making it big, "Chance Pe Dance" has got nothing to stand out as its merit, apart from the spirited performance of Shahid Kapoor.

In other words, Shahid is the only "Chance" for the movie to impress its viewers and I sincerely doubt he alone would be able to save it. The flick has several serious issues in its execution, which forcibly restrict it to be called as a below average project. Here they are for your consideration:

1. The moment a song starts in the movie, it shifts to a music video mold, which is no doubt the forte of its director Ken Ghosh. Though the songs are indeed a treat to watch, but it seems Ken worked more hard on the songs and less on his story.

2. The movie has a completely avoidable track of a school and its students winning a dance competition due to their dance teacher Shahid. The sequence, which is highly inspired from "The School of Rock" (2003), is not scripted well, gets hurriedly finished and looks like a misfit in the movie.

3. A director who can be called as the Master of Music Videos, ideally must have a good ear and incredible music sense. But Ken simply disappoints in this department as he is not able to get any good songs from the otherwise talented singer Adnan Sami. The music of "Chance Pe Dance" is a big let-down, especially with a weak finale song at the reality show in the climax.

4. It seems that both the writer and director are pretty confused regarding what their lead characters have to do on the screen. Shahid, who is supposed to be an aspiring talented actor, is more interested in showing his dancing skills than the acting. On the other hand, Genelia, who plays a choreographer in the movie, is given no detailed sequence of teaching the dancing steps to anyone. In fact she seems to be more interested in acting, with all her cute mannerisms and doesn't even talk about dance in the movie. Mohnish Behl, is the most confused one, who at first selects Shahid for his movie and then suddenly rejects him, without any reason.

5. The most irritating one comes towards the climax, when Shahid is participating in a big channel' reality show in which we are simply not shown any of his competitors. The viewers only get to see Shahid's performance on the stage (that's too a dancing one) and he easily goes on to win the acting contest and becomes a star.

In the acting department, Shahid is the only savior in the movie who gives a sincere and spirited performance which shows more of his sensitive and emotional persona. He might be counting a lot on this movie but may not get the desired results at the box office. Genelia as his lover, performs much better than her previous movies. But the cool and pretty girl doesn't get a well written role and thus cannot be blamed for anything. Parikshit Sahni repeats his fatherly act of "3 Idiots", but still manages to impress & Vikas Bhalla is a bit loud in his few scenes.

In the end, looking at the track record of the talented director Ken Ghosh, one wonders, why he chose this kind of completely predictable subject for his third important movie which also had the most sellable stars at his disposal. Was this the story he was working on, in this long gap of almost 5 years? Or the movie was a victim of an uncontrolled delay without his fault.

To sum up, "Chance Pe Dance", which was more publicized as a dancing musical, has only few dancing sequences to watch out and no particular song to rave about. The choreography and song picturisation does entertain you at times, but in the absence of some equally good tracks and a novel script, they fail to create a lasting impact.