A simple story, quite predictable, with only one famous actor (trying to make a comeback), a debutant director and yet quite a nice, successful and appealing product: Aaja Nachle.
The premise of Aaja Nachle is Madhuri Dixit, who is settled in the US, having long moved on from her past life in India. News of her guru's impending death brings her and us face-to-face with her past: her parent's aspirations and her lover's dreams quashed by her romance with an American photographer encouraged by her liberal dance guru. Upon return she discovers that the disdain of her fellow Shamilites about her hasn't decreased, and her dance school is in the danger of being replaced by a shopping mall.
So she sets off to make her small town realize the importance of having a dance school, and to a certain extent, find and repair her long-lost roots. Thus begins the quest for a Laila-Majnu play, realized by the most unusual and incompetent of Shamili's home-grown would-be talent.
Nothing about the story jumps out at you. Everything (eventually) happens as one would predict. The movie is peppered with small wins: how Madhuri convinces the local politician, how she motivates her actors, above-average music by Salim Sulaiman and decent performances by everybody. The best part of the movie however, is the climax. After hearing Laila-Majnu of all things in the first 40 minutes of the movie, I started resigning my fate to yet another rendition of a very ghisa-pita story, something that I was sure would either be too artsy or anticlimactic for me to appreciate. The play however, is surprisingly well-executed, and is the highlight of the movie because it is good and contextually believable.
Several factors come together to make this movie the perfect comeback vehicle for Madhuri and launching vehicle for the director. A bunch of very talented actors with little star power allow Madhuri to shine through without letting it be a one-(wo)man cinematic effort. It is downright impossible to believe she is a mother of two and nearly 42 years old. She looks as if she never aged, she dances as if she never stopped, she acts as if she never left. Very competent performances from Konkona Sensharma, Kunal Kapoor (from RDB), Raghuvir Yadav (Mungerilal), Ranbir Shorey, Vinay Pathak and Yashpal Sharma make the movie complete. A brief but well-executed cameo by Akshaye Khanna is also worth mention. A surprise of sorts among all of the above however is Vinay Pathak, as one gets to see his dance moves in this movie. Many conventional stars couldn't have done a better job.
Overall, certainly worth a watch if you like movies that don't necessarily have one big crowd-pulling (f)actor.
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