Dream Girl 2 Movie Review: Ayushmann Khurrana's Return as 'Pooja' is Less Funny and More Farcical This Time Around! (LatestLY Exclusive)

Dream Girl 2 Movie Review: When I watched Dream Girl 2, I was reminded of the Malayalam film Mayamohini, which starred Dileep. The film, which was a box office success, featured Dileep dressing up as a woman to trick a family into accepting him as their daughter-in-law. This is something that Ayushmann Khurrana also does in Dream Girl 2. However, Mayamohini was a terrible comedy with cringe-worthy jokes and crass gags that felt like an insult to women and our intelligence. Dream Girl 2 is, thankfully, not that terrible, but it is not as funny as its witty predecessor either. Aditya Roy Kapur Spotted at Screening of Rumoured Girlfriend Ananya Panday Starrer Dream Girl 2 (Watch Video).

Dream Girl 2 brings together the director Raaj Shaandilyaa and lead actor Ayushmann, along with Annu Kapoor, Manjot Singh, Vijay Raaz, and Abhishek Banerjee from the first film. They return to the same locales but with different characters and setting. The first film's female lead, Nushrratt Bharuccha, was unceremoniously replaced by Ananya Panday. Not that Nushrratt would miss out on much, as the role is still a thankless one and Ananya and Ayushmann don't seem to have much discernible chemistry.

The story this time sees Karam (Ayushmann) as a dancer in a jagrata troupe in Lucknow, where his father Jagjit (Annu Kapoor) is the singer. They are also heavily in debt, with the bank even sealing their house. Karam is in love with a pretty lawyer named Pari (Ananya Panday), whose rich father (Manoj Joshi) challenges him to make Rs 50 lakhs in six months if he wants to marry her.

In an effort to make this huge sum, Karam turns into a woman named Pooja and works first as a dancer at a bar owned by Sona bhai (Vijay Raaz), where his best friend Smiley (Manjot Singh) is also employed. Then, to help Smiley further and in his own desperation to make money, 'Pooja' ends up as a daughter-in-law at the house of a wealthy Muslim man named Abu Saleem (Paresh Rawal), married to his disinterested son Mohammed Sharukh (Abhishek Banerjee). The rest of the film follows how Karam manages to get out of this mess and get the girl he loves.

Watch the Trailer of Dream Girl 2:

Dream Girl 2 comes at a time when audiences are eager to lap up sequels for nostalgia. Gadar 2 and OMG 2 are both doing well at the box office, and Dream Girl 2 is also expected to have a strong opening weekend based on its advance ticket sales. The film even pays homage to Gadar by using the song "Main Nikla Gaddi Leke" in a comic scene, but I have a feeling that this was a last-minute addition made after the success of Gadar 2. The song doesn't really fit the scene, and it feels like a forced attempt to capitalise on Gadar 2's popularity.

I enjoyed the first Dream Girl when it came out. It wasn't a groundbreaking comedy, but it was funny enough thanks to its witty dialogue, situational humor, and talented cast. Dream Girl 2 has all of these elements as well, but it doesn't quite hit the same mark. The film feels like it's trying too hard to be funny, and it often falls flat.

Because of the occasionally witty liners and a talented cast, that also includes the likes of Rajpal Yadav, Seema Pahwa and TVF Kota Factory's Ranjan Raj, the first half elicited a couple of good chuckles for me but not much. Still it was nice to return to the colourful world of these characters, a feeling that didn't last long enough. The second half is much less funny, and the situations become increasingly convoluted in an attempt to force out laughs.

Certain situational humour is written without much thought for logic, yes, even for an absurdist comedy like this. Like, there is a scene where a funeral is happening in a house but two inhabitants there are absolutely oblivious of it and thus, their ignorance leads to comedy. The point, though, is why would they not be aware of a body lying in the main courtyard of the house? That's never established. In the same scene, a girl doesn't inform her boyfriend about the death in her family, which leads to him arriving at their house with a wedding procession. This is also difficult to believe, especially in the age of smartphones.

This is just one example of a scene that didn't work well because the filmmakers seemed to think that logic is not important in comedy (when in fact, good comedies don't need to abandon logic). The editing also goes awry in some scenes, either leaving glaring inconsistencies that should have been caught, or jarringly jumping to another scene, leaving us wondering "What just happened there?"

One example of the former is a scene where Pooja is talking on the phone in a hallway, and in the background, we can see Shah Rukh Khan entering the hallway through one of the doors. However, the next time the scene cuts back to Pooja, Shah Rukh Khan is nowhere to be seen behind her. But in the very next shot that returns to Pooja, he is once again seen entering the room. This should have been caught at the editing bay, and it's not the only scene where such an error went unnoticed.

At times, Dream Girl 2 conveniently sways over setups to push for the next aspect of the story. In the first film, there is a good buildup for why the protagonist takes up the job of a female sex talk operator. Dream Girl Movie Review: Ayushmann Khurrana Is at His Hilarious Best in the Funniest Film in Recent Times.

Here, the idea of turning him into a woman is hastily introduced so that we can laugh at the sight of a man dressing up as a woman and receiving unwanted attention. Another scene shows the death of a character after witnessing "Pooja's" manhood, but it is never established in the previous scene how this happened.

Look, I wouldn't have noticed these issues if the film had been genuinely funny, but unfortunately, that's not always the case. At one point, the hero has to be both Karam and "Pooja" to deceive Saleem's family, and this inevitably sets it up for comparison with other films, from Golmaal to Haseena Maan Jayegi, and thereby loses itself in this battle of comic wit (or, in the case of HMJ, sorely misses Govinda's brilliant comic timing).

Dream Girl 2 also attempts to be woke by trying to address what it means to be a woman, about homosexuality, and about communal harmony. But then it goes on to make a joke on how depression is a rich person's issue. Also how many times should we laugh at the sight of two oranges being passed off as breasts? Why, when the film talks about how difficult it is to be a woman, does it then derive humor from the lustful attentions of men? Or, for that matter, why is it that in films like these, the male characters are so obsessed with the one "female" character who dresses in drag?

All of this leads to a finale where the hero lectures everyone on their mistakes and talks about trusting your partner to the heroine who is about to marry someone else and belittles her. All this after repeatedly lying to her and hiding things from her throughout the movie. By then, I can only slap my forehead at the perceived male hypocrisy and needless victim complex at display here.

Final Thoughts

It's hard not to feel sorry for Ayushmann Khurrana, who gives his all to the role and delivers a performance he thinks is challenging gender norms. However, it's also hard to enjoy this film when the comedy feels forced, the situations become increasingly farcical, and the setups for gags feel contrived. Dream Girl 2 relies too heavily on its talented cast to carry it through, but unfortunately, it doesn't give them the right material to work their magic on. No Dream run this is!

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Aug 25, 2023 11:23 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).