DCOM's Spin. (Spoiler Review)

Disney Channel's large roster of original movies has been entertaining children and young teens for decades. Nobody can forget DCOM's most successful trilogy, the High School Musical franchise that put the likes of Zac Efron on the Hollywood map. Does Spin have the chance to put its star, Avantika on Hollywood's radar instead of Bollywood?

DCOM's latest entry, Spin tells the story of an Indian girl named Rhea, who has spent most of her teenage life working at her family's restaurant, run by her father who is avoiding being matchmade again after Rhea's mother passed. After seating her crush at a dinner table, our relatable teen meets Max in high school again and the two bond through her talent of making great mixes/playlists and his talent in being an aspiring DJ. After recommending him to be a part of her friend's school function, the two create a great DJ mix for him to perform for the school activity. 

However, Rhea is swamped with helping Max, helping her dad at the restaurant, and helping her friends at Robotics class which leads to a bottle exploding. After helping Max with his mix and performing it in front of the entire student body, Max conveniently forgets to credit her. After confronting him about it, Max apparently has never planned to give her credit. Sneaking out to the function to avoid restaurant shifts, Rhea's Dad grounds her for not helping him. 

In the end, her friends help her to participate in a DJ contest, one that Max is also entering, to prove to Rhea that she can create a better mix and has a better ear for creating or combining different styles of music which ultimately allows her to connect with her passed mother whom also had a connection with music. Like all DCOM movies, there is always a happy ending (or at least portraying a sense of victory for their characters by the end). Rhea wins the competition which causes Max to regret belittling her worth and her dad to finally realize that he needs Rhea to finally be able to spread her wings instead of letting her stretch herself to extended lengths to please others. 

I don't know how many people want to read a review for a Disney Channel movie but I think someone should talk about this movie. Spin is the first DCOM to feature an Indian lead who thankfully has a group of friends of a diverse kind and has no beef with the school's mean girl, which luckily, isn't something this school has. Spin is Disney Channel's first big step to a new generation of original movies that will not only provide comfort for the current generation but also feature stories that will be relatable and inspiring to boys and girls of all backgrounds and ethnicities. 

Avantika has been featured in two Indian movies before this and she might be the next crossover star after the likes of Priyanka Chopra, Deepika Padukone, and Amy Jackson. Hopefully, she will gain the same amount of attention Maitreyi Ramakrishnan did after starring in the Netflix hit, Never Have I Ever. With Mindy Kaling's show and Spin, Hollywood is finally allowing Indian representation within American media, something needed after the big way the Chinese were the only Asians represented after the success of Crazy Rich Asians, even if Asian basically refers to a number of ethnicities which includes both the Chinese... and the Indians.