Disco Dancer

Director: Babbar Subhash
Music composed by: Bappi Lahiri
Release date: 10 December 1982 (India)

First ₹100-crore Bollywood blockbuster

Review by Dr Usman Latif Khawaja

The film stars Mithun Chakraborty and Kim in the leading roles, with Om Puri, Gita Siddharth, and Karan Razdan in supporting roles, and Rajesh Khanna in a special appearance.

Dizzy and delirious, but dancing

I am going to be very candid and critical in my opinion of this overwrought, glitzy melodrama, which was made in 1983 as a disco epic in ludicrously bad taste by the director from hell, who employed the worst extras and the most nauseatingly disgusting sets to launch Mithun as India’s disco-dancing champion, while the rest of the world had forgotten about Donna Summer and Boney M. Notwithstanding the fact that Hollywood disco movies are anyway superior to this rags-to-riches story, which is filled with outrageously bad costumes, the most absurd villains, and very poor technical support, if any at all, since the music by Bappi Lahiri is inspired by multiple sources and the cameraman has no clue as to where to place his equipment.

The result is a rip-off which is so earnest and sincere in its disco worship that you almost want to like it. But alas, the whole thing is only held afloat, barely, due to Mithun’s talent as an actor and a dancer, though, earnestly, he is not even near his normal self in either department. Yet how do you explain its immense popularity despite its silly pretensions to be a disco movie, when it is more of a kung-fu vendetta by Jimmy [Mithun]?

Since the ’60s, when Shammi Kapoor decided to be the Elvis Presley lookalike clown, and then Jeetendra turned himself into a jumping jack in the ’70s, Bollywood had never even encountered a decent male dancing star. So, after Grease and Saturday Night Fever, the Bollywood producers were looking for an adroit replacement to make a typical spicy dish to make the m...