Cast: Madhuri Dixit, Kunal Kapoor, Konkona Sen Sharma, Akshaye Khanna, Irrfan Khan, Divya Dutta, Raghubeer Yadav, Ranvir Shorey, Sushmita Mukherji

Director: Anil Mehta

After a disturbing phone call during a dance rehearsal in faraway New York pulls a young woman back home, to a little village in India. Her guru is dying, and his legacy, a dance-drama complex called, appropriately, Ajanta, is facing imminent destruction. For Dia, it is a clarion call to action.

The story of Aaja Nachle has been crafted expressly for its star. Madhuri Dixit, the last Diva of Bollywood, has been away in the US being good wife and mom. She's now on a mission to re-claim her place in the pantheon, just like her heroine Dia, who has two months to win over Shamli, the town she fled years ago, in order to save her guru's dharohar.

To that end, Dia does everything an adopted New Yorker can. She employs a winsome twang to win over Shamli's foreign-educated MP, who also happens to be an ex-royal (Akshaye). She runs an eye over a disgruntled youth (Kunal) and grabs him for a lead role in the show she's planning to put up with the clunky participation of the townspeople, who are largely indifferent to her efforts. She teaches a leaky-nosed foul-mouthed harpy (Konkona) how to dress pretty to attract said youth. She foils local businessman (Irrfan) who wants to build a mall after razing Ajanta to the ground, by making his wife, her bachpan ki saheli (Divya) see the light. She even pulls a creaky marriage together by roping in the stuffy-sarkari-babu husband (Vinay Pathak) so that sad wifey (Sushmita) perks up. Whew.

... contd.