A street full of dancers trembling to the rhythm of the music is at a dead end in Street Dancer 3D. It’s a building built on weak foundations: yes, a pile of rubble, that’s what Street Dancer 3D makes collapse under its own weight. In an unseemly frenzy of frenzy, it’s an alleged celebration of dance. The film fails in its attempt.
The heart of the film seems to be in the right place and the many feet he puts into action are quite agile. The head, if there’s one that works, can’t keep up, inventing scenes so childish and fanciful that one wonders what’s going on. The Street Dancer 3D does not inspire reflection. So why try it?
It’s a dance movie that uses 3D for nothing more than shots aimed at the audience. The bullets range from donuts flying at high speed in a nightclub brawl, to a bead of sweat dripping from Nora Fatehi’s hip in slow motion, to Prabhu Deva throwing her snow-white hat towards the camera. In the middle of this hail of insignificant missiles, a scenario disappears without a trace.
Street Dancer 3D, directed by Remo D’Souza, takes place in London and features an excess of cacophonic gymnastics accompanied by a plot that oscillates between ridicule and prudery. If this concoction, based on Tushar Hiranandani’s screenplay, had been a slightly better cinematic effort, we might have questioned its subversive core, which revolves around a pacifist theme centered on the fate of illegal immigrants from the subcontinent (whatever their country of origin) who languish in Britain.
In the first hour of this excruciatingly long film (150 minutes), we are only treated to debauched choreography that highlights the bitter rivalry between two groups of performers: an Indian group, led by the young Punjabi Sahej Singh (Varun Dhawan), and a Pakistani group, centered on the spirited Inayat (Shraddha Kapoor). They dance, argue, growl and insult each other. No matter what they do, the result is the same. Everything is absolutely PG.
Street Dancer 3D starts with an accident. A male artist leading the Street Dancers team in a high-profile competition is enthusiastically cheered on by a young man in the delirious audience. The dancer has an unfortunate fall on stage and breaks his knee. Two years later, the young man, the main character in the film, Sahej, acquires a dance studio after a trip to Punjab to attend a wedding and vows to fulfill his older brother’s dream.
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