Ayushmann Khurrana in a shot from the movie. (Courtesy: YouTube)

A laughably vacuous script is not the one undoing of Dream Girl 2. The comedy caper opens with a jagrata sequence capped by a track and dance carried out by lead actor Ayushmann Khurrana. Taking a cue from him, the remainder of the forged treats the movie like an all-nighter with out a morrow and ham their means via an completely unfunny concoction.

Directed by Raaj Shaandilyaa, who helmed the 2019 precursor, Dream Girl 2 has the likes of Vijay Raaz and Seema Pahwa, actors who’re normally completely dependable, however the heavy lifting is left fully to Khurrana. He does what he can to salvage a stale storyline that’s as hole as a drum.

It is not till a pre-climactic sequence, which permits Khurrana’s character to launch right into a self-righteous tirade in opposition to everybody inside earshot, that the actor comes into his personal. The sequence of supposedly comedian scenes that precede it’s, nonetheless, a very wasted tickle combat – it doesn’t yield the anticipated chortle riot.

In one stray scene, the hero who spends many of the movie within the guise of a married lady he says to a personality enamoured with ‘her’: aise mat ro, mujhe hansi aa jayegi (do not cry, I’ll break into laughter). The comedy has the reverse impact: it reduces the viewers both to tears or lulls them into the form of impassivity that lasts the complete period of the movie.

Mathura resident Karam Singh (Khurrana), a jobless gender-shifting jagrata performer, is in love with budding lawyer Pari Shrivastava (Ananya Panday). But since his father, Jagjeet Singh (Annu Kapoor), is buried beneath a mountain of debt and their ancestral house is a crumbling mess, the lady’s dad (Manoj Joshi) lays down situations for the suitor.

Find a job, renovate your own home and construct up a considerable financial institution steadiness and solely then ask for my daughter’s hand, the money-minded patriarch says. Karam, egged on by his greatest pal Smiley (Manjot Singh), takes a shot at being a bar dancer at a nightclub owned by Saajan “Sona Bhai” Tiwari (Vijay Raaz). The cash is nice however is it adequate?  

Smiley loves Sakina (Anusha Mishra). It is now this lady’s dad Abu Saleem’s (Paresh Rawal) flip to place his foot down and make a requirement of his personal. Get my son, Mohammed Shahrukh (Abhishek Banerjee), out of the deep funk that he has sunk into since his break-up along with his girlfriend, he says to the ever-jovial Smiley, earlier than you wed Sakina. Karam, impersonating Pooja, re-enters the scene pretending to be a shrink to assist his good friend out.

The comedy of errors and messy cross-connections between members of Abu Saleem’s messed-up household and Karam’s cash-strapped dad and supportive good friend is marred by the writing (by the director and Naresh Kathooria). It by no means rises above the pedestrian. One does chortle at what’s going on however for all of the flawed causes.

Some of the jokes that the characters crack journey on Sunny Deol/Gadar and Shahrukh Khan/Pathaan. They fall flat. But they’re inoffensive, if not satisfactory, however what is not acceptable in any respect is that Dream Girl 2 pokes enjoyable at sexual orientation, gender fluidity, adoption and even despair (and the psychiatrist’s occupation) in its quest for lowbrow comicality.

Although the hero of Dream Girl 2 masquerades as a girl in order that he could make the cash he must marry the lady he loves, the movie has solely two girls. One is the hero’s girlfriend who breathes cold and warm because the male protagonist switches genders on the snap of a finger, ceaselessly inviting bother within the course of. The different is a much-married older lady, Jumani (Seema Pahwa), who’s in the course of a messy divorce and desperately looking for a fourth hubby if meaning leaping into an even bigger muddle.

All the opposite girls who ought to logically have been round or, on the very least, been accounted for are non-existent. Karam’s father is a widower and so is Sakina’s dad. And there may be nary a point out of Pari’s mom. So, it’s secure to presume that her dad, too, doesn’t have a spouse anymore. Wonder what the logic may be.

The viewers may need search for a clue in a line that Karam/Pooja delivers with the intention to enlighten a bemused Smiley: Tujhe pata nahi kitna mushkil hota hai ladki banna (You do not know how troublesome it’s to grow to be a girl). He doesn’t cease there. He ends the thought with Ussey bhi mushkil hota hota hai ladki hona (It is even mor troublesome to be a girl). That is all of the wokeness that Dream Girl 2 can muster.        

By far the funniest of the characters on this uninspired comedy is a financial institution worker named Tiger Pandey (Ranjan Raj), who falls in love with Pooja’s voice on the telephone (a la the lovers he/she had in 2019’s Dream Girl) and appears for her all throughout Agra and Mathura.

 Unfortunately, he’s essentially the most dispensable of all the boys hovering over Pooja. He seems solely to be ridiculed left and proper after which disappears solely to reappear and be handled like a punching bag.

The hero of  Dream Girl 2 has to make frequent visits to the bathroom to get his oranges in place as he repeatedly transitions between genders. If solely the makers, out to money in on the success of 2019’s Dream Girl, knew their onions higher, the meagre quantity of juice that they extract from an concept that has been wrung skinny would have been tangier, if nothing else.

To the credit score of Ayushmann Khurrana, he by no means gives the look that he’s on a sinking ship. He doesn’t maintain again one bit even when the writing lets him down. Manjot Singh, when the script permits, troopers on gamely and lends the lead actor some assist.  

But when an array of seasoned actors with enviable observe data are decreased to merely going via the motions, you recognize you’re watching a movie that doesn’t know the place it’s headed. We the viewers determine fairly shortly: this one goes nowhere.