Disco Dancer

If there's one thing Bollywood does better than any other movie-making industry, it's excess. Colors, music, dancing, clothes, sets, melodrama—they love to take things to the next level. Sometimes they take it to such an extreme that a western sense of style or good taste just can't be applied. Western sensibilities are as likely to fit within some Bollywood movies as moon ponies and unicorns are likely to be found frolicking in Dick Cheney's back yard. Things that could never work in a western film sometimes work in Bollywood.

Disco was already all about excess and poor taste, so when Bollywood does disco you'd better be prepared for a double-barreled blast of dance inferno madness.

Disco Dancer tells the epic tale of Jimmy, a poor boy who loves music and his mother. He really, really loves his mother, and refuses to eat unless she feeds him by hand. I assume this is less creepy when not taken out of cultural context, but the movie brings it up over and over, even when Jimmy is an adult. But enough about that.

Jimmy and his mother are forced to flee Bombay after a cruel rich man accuses them of theft. Every movie needs a conflict to resolve, and conflict works best with a villain! Disco Dancer's villain is a rich, toad-like little man that slaps women around, steals guitars from children, and evicts constipated old men from their homes. In short, he's a total bastard. Jimmy grows up singing and dancing on the streets, but he never forgets having to flee Bombay and the insult done to his mother (who is presumably still feeding him by hand). "Mother, I have my music. I will sharpen this music like a sword and stab the city's heart with it!" He will get his revenge on those who have done him wrong... through the power of disco!

Can Jimmy defeat the evil Disco Dancer, who just happens to be the son of the evil bastard who slapped his mother and stole his guitar when he was young? Can he win the heart of the evil villain’s daughter? Will all of Bombay love his amazing disco dancing skills? Who will wear the craziest outfit in this movie? Why the hell are these gangsters doing synchronized finger-snapping before they get karate kicked through brick walls?

It would be easy to dismiss Disco Dancer as pure junk if you haven't seen it. Fortunately (like many Bollywood movies) it possesses such infectious enthusiasm that the movie is enjoyable even though the pieces it's crafted from are so patently ridiculous. Mixing sappy melodrama, kung fu fights with gangsters straight out of an of Indian West Side Story, Bollywood-style disco song and dance numbers (some of which have bizarre adaptions of American tunes like Video Killed the Radio Star), romance, and borderline cartoon-esque villains; it shouldn't work.

Somehow it kind of does. The movie is off in its own weird, alternate world where disco was and always will be cool, the villains are vile, and for some reason people who are really good at disco are also experts at poorly choreographed kung fu. The film is rife with sparkling candy-colored scenes, some of which look like they were shot through a kaleidecope. Some of the dance numbers are pretty cool and a some of the bizarre tunes are catchy. The fight scenes are pretty damn funny, too. For the right kind of viewer it's a small piece of glittering disco gold.

Maybe if disco had been the way Bollywood imagined it people would hate it less. Ok, probably not, but it certainly would have been more entertaining.