Munna Michael
Synopsis:
Nawazuddin Siddiqui is literally trying to execute a moonwalk while a bunch of confused background dancers in neon green jackets just stand there looking completely bewildered and sweating under the studio lights. Munna Michael features this exact kind of chaotic energy from start to finish. Let us back up for a second because you need to know how we even got here in this crazy trip of a film. We start with a tiny baby found abandoned near a dustbin who gets scooped up by a washed-up street dancer named Michael, played by Ronit Roy, who loves Michael Jackson more than anything else in this world. This kid grows up to become Munna, played by Tiger Shroff, and he's basically a human trampoline doing backflips over cars and breaking bones with his bare hands while living on the gritty streets of Mumbai just like you see in so many classic hindi movies. He dances on street corners for cash and dreams of becoming the ultimate pop star, and honestly his abs look like they were chiseled out of solid marble by angry gods who hate carbs, but his dad just wants him to stay away from the dangerous world of dance because dancing got his own career ruined by greedy club owners. Stuff happens and Munna gets hired to teach a ruthless gangster named Mahinder Fauji, who is played by Nawazuddin and loves the color red, how to dance to impress his runaway girlfriend.
Mahinder wants to win back Dolly, played by Nidhhi Agerwal, who ditched his criminal empire because she wants to be a famous dance star instead of a gangster's arm candy. And then boom, Munna travels to Delhi and meets Dolly at a shady local club where she's struggling to book gigs, and he pretends to be her manager or boyfriend or something, and they start rehearsing together every single day while the camera swoops around them at dizzying speeds. They do this whole romantic training montage with too many lens flares and background extras wearing weirdly specific beige fedoras, and you can just tell the director watched too many step-up flicks before editing this mess. Nidhhi Agerwal is trying her absolute best with the material, but her character basically exists just to stand in the middle of a love triangle and look pretty while the boys argue about rhythm and loyalty. Mahinder falls madly in love with Dolly without realizing Munna and Dolly are getting super close, and it is painfully awkward to watch a hardened criminal try to express his feelings through awkward salsa steps and heavy breathing. The whole vibe shifts constantly between brutal gang violence and sparkly dance numbers that cost more than a small island nation's GDP. Sahil Anand shows up somewhere in this fever dream to add to the chaos, and you are just sitting there wondering how any of these subplots are ever going to connect before the credits roll. Bollywood movies love a good identity crisis, and this one commits to the bit harder than almost anything else released in recent years.
Right around the interval point, the plot screeches to a violent halt so everyone can participate in a massive, totally unnecessary musical extravaganza that disrupts all narrative momentum. You are just sitting there with your popcorn thinking the story is about to get somewhere dark, and then suddenly fifty backup dancers drop from the ceiling wearing sequined vests and singing about passion. The interval block hits hard when Mahinder finally discovers that Munna and Dolly have feelings for each other, and he literally loses his mind in a fit of rage that shatters a very expensive mirror. He feels betrayed because he trusted Munna like a brother, and now his criminal empire and his fragile romantic ego are both crumbling into dust simultaneously. This leads to a frantic sequence where Munna and Dolly have to pack their bags and run for their lives across state lines while Mahinder’s goons chase them in beat-up sedans through dusty rural highways. Hindi films always have the most dramatic car chases where nobody ever wears seatbelts, and this one is no exception because windows are getting smashed every five seconds by flying iron rods. They escape to a remote dance academy where a big national televised competition called The Rising Star is taking place, because obviously the only way to settle a violent gang feud is through a high-stakes hip-hop tournament broadcasted live across the nation.
Munna enters the competition to prove his deadbeat dad and the entire world wrong once and for all, but Mahinder tracks them down and storms the backstage area with a loaded pistol and zero chill. Honestly, the security at this national TV broadcast is an absolute joke because random armed thugs just walk right past metal detectors carrying heavy artillery without anyone blinking an eye. Mahinder corners Munna in a dingy dressing room filled with hanging costumes, and they have this long, sweaty, dramatic heart-to-heart dialogue about loyalty, betrayal, and the healing power of dance while holding each other at gunpoint. Mahinder realizes he's the bad guy and that forcing someone to love him through intimidation is pretty uncool, so he actually lowers the gun and decides to let Dolly choose her own destiny instead of shooting everyone in sight. Then, in the climax of the entire film, Munna takes the main stage for the final round of the dance competition and performs a tribute routine that mixes Michael Jackson moves with classic desi street grooves while pyrotechnics explode behind him. He spins, he leaps, he flips through the air in a shiny gold jacket while the judges stare in absolute disbelief with their mouths hanging wide open. The crowd goes wild and screams bloody murder as the confetti cannons rain plastic garbage all over the front rows. Munna hits a final freeze pose directly facing the camera lens while panting heavily and sweating profusely under the blazing stage lights.
The sound design during the third-act dance battle in Munna Michael is weirdly distracting, especially because every time Nawazuddin Siddiqui stamps his foot on the wooden stage, it sounds less like a sneaker hitting a floor and more like someone dropping a heavy encyclopedia onto a desk. It's a small thing, but it bugged me for twenty minutes straight before the plot finally lurched forward into another song about how much Nawaz's character wants to learn the moonwalk. Tiger Shroff plays Munna, a kid raised on the streets of Mumbai who treats Michael Jackson like a theological figure, and if I'm honest, the whole enterprise feels less like a narrative feature and more like an extended showreel designed to prove that its leading man can spin on his head without fracturing his cervical spine. You watch these Hindi films sometimes and you get the distinct impression that the screenwriter finished page ten, looked at the remaining blank pages, and simply wrote the word dance in capital letters thirty times before handing the manuscript to the producer with a shrug.
Director Sabbir Khan previously collaborated with Shroff on Baaghi, and while that action flick possessed a certain brutal efficiency of movement, this picture lacks any discernible rhythm in its non-musical sequences. Scenes begin abruptly, drag on through three beats too many of uncomfortable silence, and then cut to black before anyone has finished their sentence. The screenplay by Vimmi Malhotra piles on exposition about orphanages and mafia dons played by Ronit Roy who somehow have time to run illegal fight clubs while also managing a sprawling empire of sheet-metal warehouses, but nobody ever stops to establish why any of these people care about dance competitions on national television. It has the narrative cohesion of a music video channel left on in an empty motel room at four in the morning. Jiiva and Sahil Anand pop up in various supporting capacities, mostly looking like they were cast because they happened to be walking past the studio lot when the production manager needed extra bodies to fill out the background of a nightclub sequence that features choreography resembling a localized seizure.
Tiger Shroff moves with a terrifying, rubbery precision that makes human anatomy look optional, though his face remains an unreadable blank slate throughout, reminding me forcibly of Taylor Lautner in Abduction during the moments where the script demands emotional vulnerability rather than a double-gainer off a balcony. He plays a guy who refuses to dance for money because art is sacred, which is a tough sell when every single routine he performs is sponsored by three different soft drink brands and features extras wearing neon wristbands that glow under ultraviolet light. Nidhhi Agerwal enters the picture as a troubled aspiring dancer named Dolly who needs to win a reality TV contest to save her family or something equally standard, and her chemistry with Shroff sits somewhere on the spectrum between two strangers forced to share an umbrella at a bus stop. She hits her marks with terrifying dedication, but her dialogue delivery sounds like she is reading subtitles off an imaginary monitor just out of frame, rendering every dramatic confrontation flat and bloodless.
Nawazuddin Siddiqui, God bless him, shows up playing a gangster named Mahinder Fauji who wants to be a pop star, and he is acting in an entirely different movie from everyone else in the frame, chewing the scenery with such ferociously unhinged energy that you almost forget you are watching a musical. He brings a strange, twitchy pathos to a character who should be completely unwatchable, dancing with all the grace of a refrigerator falling down a flight of stairs, yet somehow holding your attention because he looks genuinely thrilled to be wearing a sequined fedora. The cinematography by Hari K. Nair relies heavily on anamorphic lens flares that streak horizontally across the screen whenever a spotlight hits the camera, mimicking the aesthetic of a mid-90s George Michael video that has been upscaled to high definition by an intern who discovered the saturation slider for the very first time. The soundtrack mixes recycled hip-hop beats with traditional percussion tracks that clash violently during the montage sequences, creating a wall of noise that feels less like a polished commercial score and more like two different radios playing in adjacent apartments.
There is a recurring visual motif involving photographs of Michael Jackson taped to dilapidated brick walls that the camera lingers on with absurd reverence, as if to remind the audience that Hollywood and Bollywood movies both share a global language of pop stardom, though here it just looks like set dressing left over from a different production entirely. The thematic undercurrents about class mobility through performance art get completely drowned out by the sheer volume of pyrotechnics and backup dancers wearing aluminum foil jumpsuits, refusing to engage with the actual grime of Mumbai life that it uses as a backdrop. Every time the film tries to say something meaningful about brotherhood and loyalty among street hustlers, another character immediately interrupts the conversation by doing a backflip over a parked taxicab. You sit there waiting for the narrative to settle down into something recognizable, but it just keeps accelerating through unearned emotional beats until the credits roll over a blooper reel where the boom mic dips into the upper corner of the shot twice.