Ayushmann Khurrana in ‘Dream Lady 2’
It’s not the most effective of phases for Ayushmann Khurrana. A one-man trade earlier than the pandemic, his inventory has fallen significantly in recent times. Gulabo Sitabo (2020), for all its attraction, went straight-to-digital and stays grievously under-seen. His ‘social message’ movies aren’t working like they used to — Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui, Anek and Physician G bear out this reality. In the meantime, a slick and complicated outing like An Motion Hero (2022) was maybe too intelligent for its personal good. Its failure seems to have put Khurrana in a tricky spot. He is aware of that Indian audiences have grown extra impatient: they search acquainted comforts and escapes. It’s why he’s out with a sequel to Dream Lady(2019), one in all his shrillest, but most commercially profitable movies.
Directed and co-written by Raaj Shaandilyaa — who additionally helmed the primary movie — Dream Lady 2 doubles up as each a sequel and a reboot. The setting, the characters, the jokes… it’s all the identical however cranked as much as ninety. As soon as once more, Karam (Khurrana) is a lithesome Mathura boy with a expertise for impersonation. As soon as once more, he lives together with his debt-ridden father (Annu Kapoor). Karam this time is in love with Pari (Ananya Panday), however must urgently enhance his fortunes to win her hand in marriage. As soon as once more, he turns into ‘Pooja,’ going past a kittenish voice on the telephone and impersonating her within the flesh. Shaandilyaa, as soon as once more, reveals actual delicacy in his dealing with of cross-gender comedy; the digicam drools over Karam’s sashaying midriff, and there’s a working gag in regards to the two oranges he stuffs in his bra.
Dream Lady 2 (Hindi)
Director: Raaj Shaandilyaa
Solid: Ayushmann Khurrana, Ananya Panday, Paresh Rawal, Seema Pahwa, Rajpal Yadav, Vijay Raaz, Manjot Singh
Run-time: 134 minutes
Storyline: In want of cash, Karam poses as a bar dancer, a psychiatrist and ultimately a wealthy inheritor’s spouse
On the recommendation of his greatest chum Smiley (Manjot Singh), Karam as Pooja takes up work as a bar dancer, then as a psychiatrist (?). Earlier than we all know it, he’s married to a doleful younger man named Shahrukh (Abhishek Banerjee). The setting expands to a rich Muslim family in Agra, with colliding subplots and a number of hidden-identity romances. It turns into too convoluted for phrases, an error of comedies greater than a comedy of errors. For all his TV writing credentials, Shaandilyaa can not orchestrate chaos in a coherent method. He lacks the zest and really feel of a Priyadarshan; certainly, it’s unhappy to see thoroughbred Priyadarshan actors like Paresh Rawal, Rajpal Yadav and Manoj Joshi wrestle to carry this movie.
At instances, as a franchise comedy, Dream Lady 2 surpasses Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 in silliness and unoriginality. Many of the gags are stolen from the primary movie: Annu Kapoor’s Muslim travesties, Karam seducing unsuspecting males on the telephone. The few jokes that land are often on the expense of a personality’s age, physique sort or psychological well-being. A disclaimer proclaiming early on that the makers maintain the LGBTQIA+ group in ‘excessive regards’ had me shuddering in apprehension. Seems, Dream Lady 2 isn’t uniquely offensive to a selected id group. As a substitute, its enemies are logic, good style and comedic artistry.
Shaandilyaa additionally seems incapable of shaking off his TV roots: there are nods within the dialogue to Kapil Sharma, Roadies, Kasautii Zindagi Kay. Like the primary half, Dream Lady 2 is strictly the sort of movie that may discover favour with a TV viewers. At times, the movie brings up actual occasions — COVID, demonetisation, the Sri Lankan financial disaster. We’re meant to chuckle at these references, on cue, regardless of their graveness. In the meantime, an inter-religious marriage ceremony that goes down with out incident or protest in Uttar Pradesh is handed off as commonplace.
There’s a perceptible quantity of queerbaiting within the Smiley-Karam observe (a component current within the first movie as properly). Khurrana goes in regards to the cross-dressing and chest-heaving and eyelashes-fluttering with a garish glee. The brand new movie offers him much more personalities to juggle; touchingly, he’s much less convincing as offended, butch Karam than he’s as Pooja. The actor’s conviction in his personal model of cinema is so sure that he by some means turns the farcical climax into an prolonged monologue on the therapeutic results of affection and acceptance. Panday, tacking on a Mathura accent, stares on in bafflement; and so can we. At over two hours, the expertise of Dream Lady 2 is way from the oneiric. Typically it’s a nightmare.
Dream Lady 2 is at the moment in theatres