Salsa in Goa Cybernoon.com Saturday, February 11, 2006 10:43:2 IST Dirty Dancing was one of those simple films, in which all the wrong elements also miraculously worked to turn it into a cult movie. Remade (copied, actually) by Pooja Bhatt (who is no master!) nearly twenty years later, as Holiday, it looks as if all the clichés of the original came tumbling out, but none of the magic. Muskaan (Onjolee Nair) is the clumsy, bespectacled bookworm-why must 'plain' also be 'moronic'? - who comes for a holiday to Goa with her parents and ditsy sister Samara (Nauheed Cyrusi). She gets involved in the problems of the hotel's dance instructor (who does he teach, there are no scenes of his class?) Dino (Morea) and his partner Eliza (Kasmera Shah). She is pregnant with the cad (Sanjit Bedi), who is now wooing Samara with cheap one-liners. Muskaan lends money for Eliza's botched abortion (it's legal in India, why pay a fortune to a back alley hack?) and also offers to stand in for her as Dino's partner (why can't he find another partner in all of Goa?). So Dino has to teach her to dance, and the supposedly gawky girl learns all the complicated splits and leaps in a matter of days.
Her father (Gulshan Grover), thinking that Dino is the one who left Eliza in trouble, frowns at Muskaan's growing relationship with the dancer. Even those who haven't seen Dirty Dancing, would know exactly where the film is headed. Bhatt flattens out the drama completely, so there is not a single moment that stays in the mind a few minutes after seeing the film. Forget any spark between Dino and Muskaan, even when Samara stumbles on to her boyfriend with another girl, she has no reaction! The class and race differences that marked the Hollywood original are glossed over. Still, if the actors had any zing, they could still have made a difference by spicing up the slow and bland movie a little bit. Dino Morea is perfectly cast, but, except for his excellent dancing, is given no scenes that define his character. As for Onjolee Nair, it hurts to diss a newcomer, but if the girl can offer anything more than one blinky-eyed expression, it isn't evident from this film. Then the music (Ranjit Barot) it is nice to hear on the radio, but when you see the Salsa being performed, heck, you want rousing Latino rhythms, not the soporific tunes that ruin the two great dance sequences.
