‘Dream Girl’ Critics’ Review: Ayushmann Props Up Uneven Script

The film released on 13 September.

Directed by Raaj Shaandilyaa, Dream Girl stars Ayushmann Khurrana as Karam, a man who is desperate for employment and takes up a job at a call centre. His talent for impersonating women comes in handy and he soon becomes employee of the year by enamouring callers as the silken-voiced Puja. The film, produced by Balaji Motion Pictures, hit theatres on 13 September.

Here’s what critics had to say about the film:

“Dream Girl, which is also the title of a Hema Malini-Dharmendra 1970s hit, wades into the gender divide without a plan or a purpose. The movie’s aims include supplying a joke every minute, which it often does, and delivering a comic take on urban loneliness, which it doesn’t quite do. The screenplay, by Shaandilyaa and Nirmaan D Singh, has a sitcom quality that attests to Shaandilyaa’s vast experience in television, which includes sketches for ‘Comedy Circus Ke Superstars’. As he stretches a slim premise over 132 minutes, Shaandilya produces some smartly observed character sketches, unthinkingly runs down women, and quite consciously plays on Muslim stereotypes for easy laughs.”

Nandini Ramnath, Scroll

“Ayushmann Khurrana is good as always in Dream Girl, especially while doing women’s voices. His accents are not consistent though. His tendency to sometimes swallow words, which has been controlled by his directors in the past, is also occasionally a problem here, and is exacerbated by the sound design of Dream Girl which allows extraneous elements to drown out the spoken word here and there. Still, Khurrana holds the film together by ensuring that Puja is amusing but never a caricature.”

Anna M Vetticad, Firstpost

“‘Dream Girl’ is, at its best, a malnourished tribute to ‘Vicky Donor’ – the hero’s sperm donation gig is replaced by the silk-voiced hero’s phone-sex-operator gig. The ensemble cast is terrific and the one-liners (“If #MeToo happened during the Mahabharata, the Pandavas would be the first to fall”), creative. The job is used as a device to access – and parody – various sections of society. At its worst, ‘Dream Girl’ is an endless sequence of cultural-appropriation gags that passes off male horniness as Indian loneliness. It sugarcoats the rawness of male desire to present a loud “family-friendly” take on what might have otherwise made for a reflective story.” 

Rahul Desai, Film Companion