A sweet, simple story about a plain Jane, Muskan (debutante Onjolie Nair) who follows her heart, and helped by the combined talents of Pooja Bhatt, Ranjit Barot, Dino Morea along with some excellent camerawork and editing, succeeds in trapizing her way to a place in her father's and the audience's hearts.
This feelgood heartwarmer by Pooja Bhatt is a competently directed film. It holds because of the empathy factor one instantly warms up to Muskan, and wills her to succeed. You see, Muskan is definitely only an average looker at best, and is always only second best to her prettier and more 'with it' sister. Worse, she's just failed an exam, and is moping all the way while driving to Goa for a five-star holiday with her supersuccessful doctor father, Dr Daksh Suri (Gulshan Grover in an endearing role of a sweet, protective and trusting father), mother Nandini (Anahita Uberoi) and sister Samara (Nauhid Cyrusi). Dr Suri urges Muskan to follow her heart. Which she does, befriending a handsome and graceful salsa dancer who's as good hearted as he is lithely musclebound and, well, down and out on luck. All the ingredients are in place for Muskan to take papa's advice and follow her heart, and you know she's destined to fall in love with the dancing dervish.
How she gets to know him is a bit far-fetched, and why she ends up learning to dance is, well, equally far-fetched. Muskan has to stand in for Dino's best friend Alisa (Kashmira Shah) who has to go for an abortion, and if she goes, Dino can't dance at the hotel that's contracted them, and if Dino can't dance, they will be fired, and if they are fired, they are finished, coz they have had to take a loan of 15000 bucks for the abortion from Muskan in the first place. So what do we have here? Muskan's character defined in a few deft scenes as a real and likeable, good, well brought up daughter with her heart in the right place, who only takes up for what is right, and never mind if even her best friends are in the wrong. So the not so pretty but immensely likeable Muskan opts to step into Alisa's shoes, and Dino takes it upon himself to teach her the moves and grooves of Salsa. Tall order, but the down and out Muskan is determined to succeed, coz this is probably her first and only chance to prove to her father she isn't a failure! And we will her to succeed, and never mind the far-fetched premise that got her into dancing with Dino and both in love with each other.
So the stage is set, and it falls upon Muskan to not only get rid of the doubts her trusting father has begun to have about her of late, but also to remove the actual culprit behind Alisa's pregnancy, the rascally Harsh, from her sister Samara life.
In a deviation from the norm, Gulshan Grover is cast as a good soul a loving, caring, trusting and protective father, and his relationship with Muskan is sensitively portrayed. Especially in the scene in which a repentant Muskan breaks down, sobbing, "I was just following my heart!", erforms with beautiful sensitivity. A memorable performance overall from him.
Dino Morea is a revelation looking and playing the part of a handsome, goodhearted but down on his luck salsa dancer, looking both, tough and vulnerable, with sensitivity to boot. He dances well, and his Goa setting helps him with the slightly awkward Hindi which sounds completely in place with his character. A much better performance than in Aksar, even though the roles cannot be compared. Immense verve, style and confidence here.
Onjolie is the perfect casting for the role of Muskan, who is definitely not a great looker and is actually styled on the awkward plain Jane of Television, Jassi. But Muskan's story, her determination to prove to herself and her father that she is not a loser, and this with the help of Dino and his like-minded, simple and good-hearted friends. And with song n dance sequences that actually take the story forward in an interesting manner. Onjolie is an exquisite dancer, and the dance form of Salsa couldn't have found a better couple to wow Indian audiences with, than her and Dino. And, of course, the music of Ranjit Barot.
The new kind of alternate sounding hip-hop-Salsa-jazz by Ranjit Barot carries the dance form of high energy Salsa with chic Jazz ballet smoothly forward. Ranjit Barot's music, and Shreya Ghosal's unrestricted and magically meandering vocals, along with Kunal Ganjawala's theme song and Barot's own singing are exquisite stuff indeed. Shreya has definitely sung some of the best songs of her career so far for Holiday. Aashiyaan, the theme song and the finale, is exquisitely sung by Kunal too, and its extremely stylish hip-hop grooves typify the entire album.
The dances! Happily, each dance sequence is not just exquisitely choreographed but also lovingly and painstakingly shot and edited with such finesse that each song n dance is one unified and smoothly flowing piece of beauty. Everything comes together for the dances here, which, incidentally, are the centrespiece and the raison d etre for watching the film.
 Most dances, for effervescence of editing, are normally shot on multi cam, especially the ones we are used to seeing on television these days, but then, multicam shoots demand flat lighting, which would have killed the beauty of not just the dance sequences, but the underlying romantic mood of each song in Holiday. So, even though the dances are shot on a single camera, the choreographer, editor, cinematographer and of course, director Pooja Bhatt have given the dances a magical, freeflowing quality.
Even though the story of the film actually springs from a plain Jane's burning desire to prove herself, happily, the film doesn't pontificate on this. Muskan's story tells it all, and subtly, in a not-in-your face manner. Proves prolific producer Pooja Bhatt (8 films in 8 years) is also a good director!
But the film is likely to work only in the multiplexes, and that too in a niche way mostly with the metro youth, who will definitely take to the film. So even though Holiday is a good film, it may have to struggle at the box office. However, it is bound to do well internationally.
Pooja Bhatt's achievement with Holiday is commendable. Her film, based entirely upon song and dance for its story, actually raises the bar for the way song and dance sequences are filmed in Bollywood. Instead of slowing down a film, as song n dance usually does, or being performed in a mindless and crassly commercial way, Holiday takes the hitherto rarely used Salsa, and weaves it into Muskan's wistful desire to prove herself, marrying empathy with foot-tapping entertainment. OK, it isn't a monumental film, it isn't an epic, of course, but if you're looking for good clean, wholesome, high energy foot-taping fun at a movie you can watch with your entire family, one that will make you want to get up and dance and wipe a tear at the same time, go for Holiday! |
