Film: Dream Girl 2

Cast: Ayushmann Khurrana, Ananya Panday, Annu Kapoor, Manjot Singh, Abhishek Banerjee, Paresh Rawal, Seema Pahwa, and others

Director: Raaj Shaandilyaa

Ratings: 3.5 Moons

In director Raaj Shaandilyaa’s comedy four years after the original Dream Girl, Karamveer (Ayushmann Khurrana) this time needs to raise a big amount of money to marry his girlfriend Pari Shrivastav (Ananya Panday). So what does he do? He pretends to be a dancer, Pooja, working at Sona Bhai’s (Vijay Raaz) bar. That’s the new twist in this 133-minutes film in which writers Raaj and Naresh Kathooria crank up the comedy with a narrative that’s a mishmash of situations and characters all crazily chasing each other.

Sona Bhai lusts for Pooja. But she also attracts unwanted attention from Shoukiya (Rajpal Yadav) while moonlighting as a psychiatrist treating his brother Shahrukh (Abhishek Banerjee) suffering from depression after a breakup. Shahrukh’s father Abu Saleem (Paresh Rawal) is firm in his belief that marrying Pooja is the cure and promises to reward her with Rs 50 lakhs for this unholy unison. To add to the confusion there’s also his daughter Jumani (Seema Pahwa) who falls head over heels for Karam even while his own father Jagjit Singh (Annu Kapoor) is madly in love with her.

Ayushmann Khurrana delightfully switches between playing Karam’s and Pooja’s characters, he’s a scream in the dance sequences with his jhataks and lataks. But Ananya Panday has little to do and is hopeless with her Braj Bhasha dialogue delivery. Annu Kapoor, as always, is brilliant. While Paresh Rawal, Seema Pahwa, Vijay Raaz, Manjot Singh (as Karam’s friend Smiley) and Abhishek Banerjee stand out with commendable support. The music by Meet Bros and Tanishk Bagchi is unmoving and but for Dil Ka Telephone 2.0, a redub of the hit from the movie’s first instalment, the other songs fail to leave an impression.

But Dream Girl 2 is not hopelessly lost. Everything about Pooja, from Ayushmann’s walk and talk to the flutter of his eyelids is impressive. As is his effortless switch from Pooja to Karam. The story has as many subplots as characters that cross paths in some really funny situations. Still, the film becomes a bit of a drag in its second half when the jokes fall flat and the pace gets sluggish. The climax is, well, an anti-climax and disappoints. But the ensemble cast including Paresh Rawal, Annu Kapoor, Seema Pahwa, Vijay Raaz and Rajpal Yadav save it from being an absolute struggle. Go see Dream Girl 2 for Ayushmann. He doesn’t disappoint and provides much laughter through all the slapstick comedy that the gender bender provides in the midst of some preachy social gyaan. The film is set in Mathura and is bound to tickle the fancy of audiences in smaller cities and towns.