Dream Girl (2019 film)

Dream Girl (2019 film)
Dream Girl is a 2019 Indian Hindi-language comedy-drama film directed by Raaj Shaandilyaa in his directorial debut and produced by Ekta Kapoor. The film focuses on a cross-gender actor (played by Ayushmann Khurrana) whose female voice impersonation begets attention from others, and talks about depression and loneliness. It also stars Nushrat Bharucha, Annu Kapoor, Manjot Singh, Vijay Raaz and Abhishek Banerjee.
Initially supposed to be titled Googly, it was renamed Dream Girl. The film was released on 13 September 2019 to a surprise blockbuster response and entered the 100 Crore Club. It was a critical and commercial blockbuster, grossing around 148 crore net in India and over worldwide, becoming one of the highest-grossing Hindi films of 2019.
In August 2022, a spiritual sequel titled Dream Girl 2 entered production, and it was released in August 2023. It stars an ensemble cast of Ayushmann Khurrana, Ananya Panday, Annu Kapoor, Paresh Rawal, Asrani, Rajpal Yadav, Vijay Raaz, Manjot Singh, Abhishek Banerjee and Seema Pahwa.
Premise
Karam always plays female character in plays as he has good ability of imitiating a female voice. He is looking for job and finds an ad offering 70,000 per month. His interviewer, Mauji, rejects him and shows him his call center where only ladies work as fantasy entertainers. Karam receives one of the call in name of Pooja and shocks everyone with his ability. Mauji employs him and his business soon picks up and Karam has admirers in Toto, Rajpal (a cop), Roma and his brother-in-law, Mahinder. At one point Karam feels what will his lover, Mahi, feel when she finds about his job and the biggest tragedy he comes across is his father, Jagjit Singh, is also one of his admirers.
Cast
Ayushmann Khurrana as Karamveer "Karam" Singh / Pooja: Jagjeet's son; Mahi's boyfriend-turned husband
Nushrratt Bharuccha as Mahi Singh (neé Thakur): Karam's girlfriend-turned wife
Annu Kapoor as Jagjeet Singh (Karam's father) / Rahul / Mehendi Haasan
Manjot Singh as Smiley Singh Dhillon / Ismail: Karam's best friend
Rajesh Sharma as Mauji a.k.a. Wji
Vijay Raaz as Policeman Rajpal Kirar
Abhishek Banerjee as Mahinder Thakur (Mahi’s brother) / Rafi
Raj Bhansali as Chintu "Toto" Gujjar
Neha Saraf as Chandrakanta Kirar: Rajpal's wife
Vedika Bhandari as Pooja, the original call center employee who was replaced with Karam by Wji
Nidhi Bisht as Roma Gupta
Neela Mulherkar as Dadi, Mahi’s grandmother
Riteish Deshmukh in song "Dhagala Lagali" (special appearance)
Production
In November 2018, Ayushman Khurrana announced Dream Girl to be written and directed by Raaj Shaandilyaa and produced by Ekta Kapoor, Shobha Kapoor and Aashish Singh. Nushrratt Bharuccha was cast opposite him. The lead character will have three accents in the film. Ahmed Khan is choreographing the dances with Khurrana in sari.
Principal photography began in December 2018. Bharucha completed her part of filming in January 2019 in Mumbai.
Release
The film was released theatrically on 13 September 2019. ZEE5 acquired digital rights and launched it online on 21 November 2019.
Reception
Critical response
Dream Girl received mixed response from critics, who criticised the "empty" and "jumbled-up" writing as well as the "tasteless" and "stale" humour, but praised the performances of the supporting cast. The film holds an approval rating of based on reviews on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of .
Charu Thakur of India Today gave the film three stars out of five, noted that Dream Girl was an out-and-out comedy with witty one-liners and jokes, which made it a long comic skit sans a storyline. She concurred with Taran in praising performance of Khurrana and Kapoor. Criticising director for losing subject of the film she concluded, "However, his [Shaandilyaa's] hesitation to delve deeper into the subject makes it score less on the report card. If you are looking for a light-hearted comedy this weekend, [this film] should definitely be on your list."
Shubhra Gupta of The Indian Express gave two stars out of five and felt the film was had many good ideas but those were not executed, stating, ".... these ideas remain half-baked, being mouthed strictly as meaningless dialogue for either laughs or claps". Praising Khurana for his performance, she concluded, "You stay watching Dream Girl for Khurrana. He plays Karam/Pooja with grace and conviction, and makes this thing sing." Priyanka Sinha Jha of News18, praising Khurrana and ensemble of Manjot Singh, Vijay Raaz, Annu Kapoor, Abhishek Banerjee, Nushrat Bharucha, Rajesh Sharma, Nidhi Bisht and Raj Bhansali for their performances, rates the film with three and half stars out of five. Agreeing with Gupta, she noted that the second half did suffer from lack of ingenuity. Praising writer-director Raaj Shaandilyaa for 'keeping the screenplay pithy, the dialogues glib and story on the tracks, she opined, "Dream Girl will surely entertain the film going audiences while sparking off an important conversation on gender constructs in Indian cinema." Writing for Film Companion, Baradwaj Rangan said "These are one-joke characters, and this is a one-joke movie. Very quickly, a sense of staleness sets in."
Box office
Dream Girl has the opening day collection of 10.05 crore, and second day collection of 16.42 crore, whereas the third day collection was 18.10 crore, taking its total opening weekend collection to 44.57 crore in India. On the fourth day the film crossed 50 crore and became Khurrana's fastest film to cross 50 crore until his next release, Bala. The film has become the eleventh highest-grossing Bollywood film of 2019.
, with a gross of 169.36 crore in India and 31.44 crore overseas, the film has grossed 200.80 crore worldwide.
Soundtrack
The music of the film is composed by Meet Bros while lyrics are by Kumaar and Shabbir Ahmed. The song "Dhagala Lagali" was removed due to a copyright issue. All soundtracks listed below have their lyrics credited solely to Kumaar unless noted otherwise:
References
32) Dream Girl 2 Review By Sanjay
External links
Dream Girl on Bollywood Hungama
Balaji Motion Pictures films
2010s Hindi-language films
Cross-dressing in Indian films
2019 films
Films directed by Raaj Shaandilyaa