There are some bad movies which kill the soul.
There are some bad movies which make you want to stab your own eyes
out simply to relieve the boredom. And there are a special few bad
movies which are hugely entertaining, as long as you have someone
watching with you to confirm that yes, the male back up dancers are
wearing baby blue long johns and a matching bubble gum pink cape and
cheerleader skirt set. Disco Dancer (1982) is one of those
films. It’s terribly, terribly bad, but you can show it to your friends
and still be able to look yourself in the mirror the morning after.
Our hero is Anil, who we meet as a poor but spunky young urchin who spends his days performing in the street with Raju Chacha (Rajesh Khanna) and his nights at home being hand fed by his saintly mother Radha (Gita Siddharth). One day Raju is called back to his home village, so Radha agrees to substitute as Anil’s musical partner. And of course it is that day when a young girl living in the mansion Anil and his mother are performing in front of calls them inside the gates. Which would be fine, except that the music is so good that the nearby crowd tries climbing the walls to get a better view, causing some damage in the process, and the girl’s father happens to be P. N. Oberoi (Om Shivpuri), who is the kind of violent millionaire with a psychopathic hatred of the poor that you only get in populist melodrama. Oberoi scatters the crowd, smacks his daughter to chase her inside, then proceeds to hit Anil and his mother, then falsely accuses them of stealing a guitar, just because he can.
After Radha is released from jail, the women of their neighborhood take to following them around shouting “Thief! Thief!” This does not make for a happy home life, so the pair pack up and leave for Goa, with young Anil darkly vowing revenge.
Eighteen years later, Anil (Mithun Chakraborty) makes his living as a wedding singer, while secretly dreaming of becoming a hugely successful disco dancer. (Because apparently you can make a lot of money disco dancing. Who knew?) He’s still a devoted son, refusing to eat unless his mother hand feeds him and vowing day and night to avenge the wrongs she has suffered. He also demonstrates his virtue by sometimes being nice to people who aren’t his mom; in particular, he promises to make his back up band very wealthy when he becomes a success.
The current king of the disco hill is Oberoi’s son Sam (Karan Razdan), who is insanely popular for no good reason. He is awful. Even in this movie, which is filled with bizarre, spasmodic flailing masquerading as dance, Sam stands out as a paragon of glorious incompetence. I can only assume that his popularity is because of his camp value, and his legions of fans are laughing at him and not with him.
Sam’s fame proves fleeting, though, when he makes the mistake of insulting his manager, David Brown (Om Puri). It’s the last straw for Brown, who quits after vowing to create a new star, who will be more famous than Sam ever was. Soon enough, Brown happens to spot Anil dancing along the road, and begins the process of grooming his new star. (The first step in the process seems to be changing Anil’s name to Jimmy. I say seems because they never discuss the name change on screen; everyone suddenly starts calling Anil Jimmy (except for his mom, naturally) and that is that.)
Sam isn’t willing to go down without a fight, though, so he thinks of a cunning plan: he’ll send his sister Rita (Kim) to Jimmy’s first concert to heckle. Rita puts on her shiniest golden go go boots, heads down to the concert, and, before Jimmy can sing a single note, leads her friends in a rousing chant of “We won’t listen to the street smart!” Jimmy is not deterred, though, and immediately launches into a song about how pretty Rita is, which wins over the crowd and Rita’s friends, and causes Rita (who we will later be shocked to learn is the little girl who sang with Anil earlier) to leave in a huff.
After passing this first crucial test, Brown, Jimmy, and Radha all return to Bombay, where Jimmy becomes a huge star. (If Sam can do it, I think anyone can.) Surprisingly, he does not become a drug addled, self centered jerk at this point. Instead, he keeps every promise he has ever made, and manages to woo Rita in the process. Naturally, this fills Sam and his father with hatred, and they (and the coolest of their goons, played by the great Bob Christo) resort to ever more complicated schemes to deal with them, until a plan seemingly lifted out of a Roadrunner cartoon leaves Radha dead and Jimmy with a crippling guitar phobia.
And this is the point where I have to say no, I am not making this up. Guitar phobia. And I haven’t even mentioned the Disco King and Queen of Africa yet. Disco Dancer contains enough concentrated strangeness to make ten Bollywood movies, along with a costume selection which combines the worst of Bollywood and the Disco era. And the movie takes both itself and disco completely seriously; there’s exactly one moment of intentional humor in the entire film, a moment which isn’t anywhere close to being as funny as the rest of the movie.
Because Disco Dancer focuses so much on the competitive aspects of disco (?), and because Jimmy is never corrupted by fame and wealth, the whole thing plays more like a sports movie than a “road to stardom” pic. It’s like Rocky, but with dancing instead of boxing. And it is enormously, gloriously bad. Watch it with friends.
Our hero is Anil, who we meet as a poor but spunky young urchin who spends his days performing in the street with Raju Chacha (Rajesh Khanna) and his nights at home being hand fed by his saintly mother Radha (Gita Siddharth). One day Raju is called back to his home village, so Radha agrees to substitute as Anil’s musical partner. And of course it is that day when a young girl living in the mansion Anil and his mother are performing in front of calls them inside the gates. Which would be fine, except that the music is so good that the nearby crowd tries climbing the walls to get a better view, causing some damage in the process, and the girl’s father happens to be P. N. Oberoi (Om Shivpuri), who is the kind of violent millionaire with a psychopathic hatred of the poor that you only get in populist melodrama. Oberoi scatters the crowd, smacks his daughter to chase her inside, then proceeds to hit Anil and his mother, then falsely accuses them of stealing a guitar, just because he can.
After Radha is released from jail, the women of their neighborhood take to following them around shouting “Thief! Thief!” This does not make for a happy home life, so the pair pack up and leave for Goa, with young Anil darkly vowing revenge.
Eighteen years later, Anil (Mithun Chakraborty) makes his living as a wedding singer, while secretly dreaming of becoming a hugely successful disco dancer. (Because apparently you can make a lot of money disco dancing. Who knew?) He’s still a devoted son, refusing to eat unless his mother hand feeds him and vowing day and night to avenge the wrongs she has suffered. He also demonstrates his virtue by sometimes being nice to people who aren’t his mom; in particular, he promises to make his back up band very wealthy when he becomes a success.
The current king of the disco hill is Oberoi’s son Sam (Karan Razdan), who is insanely popular for no good reason. He is awful. Even in this movie, which is filled with bizarre, spasmodic flailing masquerading as dance, Sam stands out as a paragon of glorious incompetence. I can only assume that his popularity is because of his camp value, and his legions of fans are laughing at him and not with him.
Sam’s fame proves fleeting, though, when he makes the mistake of insulting his manager, David Brown (Om Puri). It’s the last straw for Brown, who quits after vowing to create a new star, who will be more famous than Sam ever was. Soon enough, Brown happens to spot Anil dancing along the road, and begins the process of grooming his new star. (The first step in the process seems to be changing Anil’s name to Jimmy. I say seems because they never discuss the name change on screen; everyone suddenly starts calling Anil Jimmy (except for his mom, naturally) and that is that.)
Sam isn’t willing to go down without a fight, though, so he thinks of a cunning plan: he’ll send his sister Rita (Kim) to Jimmy’s first concert to heckle. Rita puts on her shiniest golden go go boots, heads down to the concert, and, before Jimmy can sing a single note, leads her friends in a rousing chant of “We won’t listen to the street smart!” Jimmy is not deterred, though, and immediately launches into a song about how pretty Rita is, which wins over the crowd and Rita’s friends, and causes Rita (who we will later be shocked to learn is the little girl who sang with Anil earlier) to leave in a huff.
After passing this first crucial test, Brown, Jimmy, and Radha all return to Bombay, where Jimmy becomes a huge star. (If Sam can do it, I think anyone can.) Surprisingly, he does not become a drug addled, self centered jerk at this point. Instead, he keeps every promise he has ever made, and manages to woo Rita in the process. Naturally, this fills Sam and his father with hatred, and they (and the coolest of their goons, played by the great Bob Christo) resort to ever more complicated schemes to deal with them, until a plan seemingly lifted out of a Roadrunner cartoon leaves Radha dead and Jimmy with a crippling guitar phobia.
And this is the point where I have to say no, I am not making this up. Guitar phobia. And I haven’t even mentioned the Disco King and Queen of Africa yet. Disco Dancer contains enough concentrated strangeness to make ten Bollywood movies, along with a costume selection which combines the worst of Bollywood and the Disco era. And the movie takes both itself and disco completely seriously; there’s exactly one moment of intentional humor in the entire film, a moment which isn’t anywhere close to being as funny as the rest of the movie.
Because Disco Dancer focuses so much on the competitive aspects of disco (?), and because Jimmy is never corrupted by fame and wealth, the whole thing plays more like a sports movie than a “road to stardom” pic. It’s like Rocky, but with dancing instead of boxing. And it is enormously, gloriously bad. Watch it with friends.
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