ABCD 2

Oscar Wilde once mentioned that ‘patriotism is the virtue of the vicious’. It is also clearly the virtue of the mediocre, so when story ideas run out in ABCD 2, the director waves the Indian flag—in Vegas, of all places, where people usually wave greenbacks or bikini tops.

An Indian hip-hop dance team has made it to the finals of the world competition there and the climax is a human pyramid with the Indian flag unfurled at the top by the movie’s star dancer (Varun Dhawan). This is about as corny as you can get in a movie that just drags the first ABCD film into a pointless sequel that doesn’t even spotlight its showpiece, the dancing of Prabhu Deva.

Apart from an introductory dance in a nightclub in Mumbai, Prabhu Deva does not dance; nor do we see him create a single dance move for the team of losers that he has agreed to mentor. All we see him do is drink himself silly in the first half of the film, where he plays a famous choreographer in decline, and later watch him turn into a shrewd manipulator as he agrees to tutor this group of dancers for the sole purpose of getting to America for something that’s on his personal agenda.

The second problem with this film is that it is not about the creativity of hip- hop, but about art direction and special effects. True, the story is about a dance group that has been accused of plagiarism because they stole their steps, in a direct ‘copy-paste’ manner, from a dance team in the Philippines. But we understand that they have reformed under Prabhu Deva’s original tutelage and have blasted their way from the Indian selection in Bengaluru to win a place in Vegas. Yet, delete the decor and the lighting, and the hip-hop looks just about average.

The first ABCD was not great, but it had passion and a plot—and Prabhu Deva danced. Not here.

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Ajit Duara