Rating : 2/5
Genre : Comedy
Year : 2019
Running time : 2 hours 17 minutes
Director : Raaj Shaandilya
Cast : Ayushman Khurana, Nusrat Bharucha, Anuu Kapoor, Abhishek Banerjee, Vijay Raaz, Rajesh Sharma, Manjot Singh
Kid rating : PG
Dream Girl, from the trailer, seemed a fun movie – quirky premise, and a solid lead actor. Our hero Karam (Khurana, whom we saw very recently in the fabulous Article 15) can speak in a woman’s voice, a talent that has gotten him cast as Sita/Radha/other Goddess/mythological character in every other play in his hometown of Mathura. Unable to secure a job, Karam finally capitulates and becomes Pooja, a female voice in a “friendship” call centre. Hordes of men are smitten by the silky-voiced Pooja, and Karam finds himself unable to extricate himself from the mess.
Dream Girl drips with sometimes-funny one-liners. The first half goes by quickly, but the second half is a slog. Director Shaandilya makes a hash of the execution, and the screenplay is dead in the water. New and inconsequential characters come out of the woodwork and you are left working out the connections/reason for the scene. Random gags are strung together without rhyme or reason and either get too hammy or too ludicrous to actually be funny. Some of this is so shoddily done that it looks like a poorly made televison serial from the 80s Doordarshan era.
The only thing really going for Dream Girl is its star. Ayushmann Khurana shines in and as the Dream Girl. Nusrat Bharucha, who fared well in Sonu ke Teetu ki Sweety, has little screen time here and is miscast. Annu Kapoor as Karam’s drowning-in-debt dad is over-the-top and insufferable – so same old same old. Abhishek Banerjee, Rajesh Sharma are actors who normally do well, but don’t quite garner applause here.
The film tries to make a patently adult-themed film family-friendly. The Friendship call-centers would rightfully be called phone-sex lines, but Dream Girl doesn’t get that tawdry. The Friendship call-center girls are matronly women who talk to their clients while cutting vegetables or knitting – the pretense of being harmless and non-degrading. Why, oh why? The film might have been edgier and believable had it told it like it was.
Then Dream Girl tries to go all sentimental on us by doing a PSA – on why human beings are so lonely that they are calling “Friendship lines”. The concern is all for the poor lonely men, and not the women who do the unpleasant work of serving those needs. It’s like the scriptwriter has blinders on. Besides, this call to end loneliness, seems fake and tacked on towards the end like an afterthought – there go the brownie points for earnestness!
All in all, a poor business, this film. In the hands of a director who knew what he was doing, this could have been rollicking good fun. Alas!
Kidwise: As I said, DreamGirl tries to cover up unpleasant situations and make them seem normal. So, your kid might have some questions (like I do 🙂 – who calls Friendship call lines?), but nothing vulgar is shown.
