Neha Dhupia has developed into a fine actor, once she got out of the mould she was trying to fit into to become a commercially successful star. She has a nicely honed style, her comic timing is better than most and she does have a number of expressions in her thespian kitty, bless the girl! And she is a lovely foil for the very talented comedy of Vinay Pathak. This film, Pappu Can’t Dance, Saala, is a story worth reading, but does it translate well into a movie?
Neha (aka Mahek Malavade) is a backup dancer who moves in next door to Vinay (Vidyadhar), an illegal tenant in a government housing colony in Mumbai. A vigilance raid later, Neha is forced to move in with Vidyadhar, since she has nowhere else to go. Her cheekiness and his earnestness make for good chemistry, and both are very convincing in their roles but somewhere along the way something goes wrong. Is it the plot? The story of Neha’s ambition to make it bigger and bigger in the tinseltown world that she sees with stars in her eyes? Or is it that Vinay moves back home to Benares to sort himself out until his dad, Naseeruddin Shah, pushes him to go look for his love in the big city? Were there too many clichés that came in the way of the moral of this story – to accept people for what they are without trying to change them? Who knows. Pappu doesn’t and we are clueless.