Dream Girl Review {3.0}: Ayushmann Khurrana starrer is a dream job gone wrong
This content has been archived. It may no longer be relevant
“ Har ek friend jaruri hota hai”…Pooja is one such Dream Girl friend who is just a call away and available 24*7. She will happily provide her ’Ear’ to lean-on for heart-broken souls..She will laugh at your lousiest of jokes..She will appreciate your pathetic sense of humour and she will willingly suffer your song in a croaking voice. No, We are not talking of Amazon’s ‘Alexa’, but a sweet talker, Pooja. Day time Karam bhaiyya turned into night time call center employee.
Ayushmann Khurana’s penchant for turning a simple character-next-door into an entertaining and intriguing human being, is already lauded by one and all. In DREAM GIRL, a jobless Ayushmann decides to mimic a girl’s voice out of desperation. He is paid handsomely for engaging clients into talking naughty sweet-nothings in every Indian dialect.
Debut director, Shaandilya, has picked up a topic that had infinite potential to turn into a rib-tickler comedy-of-errors. Shot in Mathura, DREAM GIRL has all trapping associated with now familiar and sought-after small-town settings and surroundings. Narrow lanes, hole-in-the-wall shops, gaudily coloured do manjilwali makaans, sweaty halwais, nosy barbers, beautiful river fronts and its ever-arguing ‘gaunwalas’ , form an all important backdrop of the film.
Ayushmann’s Pooja can speak a smattering of Haryanvi, Bihari and Punjabi. She has to brush up her Urdu knowledge to enjoy Haryanvi cop, Vijay Raaz’s lame urdu shayari. A simple cop mixing up FIR reports with Urdu nazms is Pooja’s die hard fan. Toto, a jobless jack, is in love with Pooja too while Mahender, a landlord’s son , is on the verge of breaking his life long ‘brahmacharya’ oath. Among many admirers is foul mouthed Rinku who wants to cozy up with Pooja after a string of heartbreaks with serial cheaters. But Ayushmann’s miseries reach a climax to discover that his own widower father is planning a second marriage with his faceless entity, Pooja.
Falling in and out of sticky situations, Pooja’s antics and her reactions to her client’s bizarre requests keep us thoroughly entertained. Speed breakers appear when Pooja starts dishing out sermons to her besotted fan base and rest of the junta about epidemic of loneliness creeping into crowded megacities. Director tries to convey that every house should have one pooja or that one person who is able to lend a sympathetic ear to the agonies of his/her family members.
Intention is not bad but repetitive punchlines, excessive hamming by every character, unnecessarily stretched gags and lack of innovative ideas almost abort the chances of DREAM GIRL’s survival. Unwanted songs drag the film further After intermission, the film almost drops into a ‘confusion-mode’ with all characters demanding to own Pooja in blood and flesh. Enter Mahi, Ayushmann’s fiancé, to bail out her darling-in-distress . Ms Nusrat Bharucha as Mahi has nothing much to do than raising flag of feminism and giving gender-sensitivity lessons to the call center owner.
Dream Girl Disappoint
Coming after super success of ANDHADHUN and BADHAI HO BADHAI, Ayushmann Khurana’s fan club expected equally engaging film but DREAM GIRL does not quite reach that point. But full marks to Ayushmann for lighting up every frame with his infectious energy, his thousand expressions per second and his boundless acting talent. A torch bearer of cinema-next-door that celebrates and highlights the mundane happenings in the life of an ordinary human being, is worth a huge applause. But he must exercise caution while making such quickies with half-cooked content.
Ms Nusrat hardly gets any screen time to flash her pearlies or flutter her eyelashes.
But Pooja’s love-sick fans are best out of the rest lot. Annu Kapoor pairs up with Ayushmann once again after VICKY DONOR as his young-at-heart fathers in his sixties. His command over Urdu diction is flawless.
Toto, the jat, is an atom bomb in small size. Vijay Raaz as Haryanvi cop is spot on in mannerisms and dialect. Badass Rinku is a fiery self, resembling a lot with real time sting-queens.
