Dream Girl (2019 film)

Dream Girl
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Raaj Shaandilyaa
Written by	Nirmaan D Singh Raaj Shaandilyaa
Screenplay by	Nirmaan D Singh
Produced by	Ekta Kapoor Shobha Kapoor
Starring	Ayushmann Khurrana Nushrratt Bharuccha
Cinematography	Aseem Mishra
Music by	Songs: Meet Bros Background Score: Abhishek Arora
Production companies	Balaji Motion Pictures ALT Entertainment
Distributed by	Pen Marudhar Entertainment[1]
Release date	13 September 2019 (2019-09-13) [2][3]
Running time	132 minutes[4]
Country	India
Language	Hindi
Budget	₹28 crore[5]
Box office	est. ₹200.8 crore[6]

Dream Girl is a 2019 Indian Hindi-language comedy-drama film directed by Raaj Shaandilyaa in his directorial debut and produced by Ekta Kapoor.^[7][8] It stars Ayushmann Khurrana as a cross-gender actor whose female voice impersonation begets attention from others, talking about depression and loneliness.^[9][10][11]

Released on 13 September 2019, Dream Girl was a major critical and commercial success, entering the 100 Crore Club in India. It grossed ₹148 crore net in India and over ₹200 crore (US$24 million) worldwide, becoming one of the highest-grossing Hindi films of 2019 and Khurrana's highest-grossing film in India. A spiritual sequel titled Dream Girl 2 was released in 2023.

Plot

Karam is a young stage actor renowned for his ability to imitate female voices and play female characters. To support his father Jagjit financially, Karam uses his female voice to land a job under Mauji alias "W-ji" at a "friendship" call center where female operators entertain clients. Karam dons the persona of “Pooja” and garners admiration from many clients including an adolescent Toto, P. C. Rajpal, and misandrist Roma, while keeping his job a secret from everyone except his best friend Smiley.

At this juncture, Karam falls in love with Mahi and gets engaged to her, but does not yet reveal his job to her. However, Jagjit and Mahi’s brother Mahinder also become Karam’s clients and fall for his Pooja persona, much to his chagrin. Unwilling to deceive his loved ones, Karam tries to distance himself from his clients, but Wji threatens to reveal Karam’s secret if he does not continue working. To complicate matters further, Toto, Rajpal, Mahinder, and Jagjit propose marriage to Pooja while Roma insists on meeting in person.

As Karam tries to dissuade his admirers, a series of confrontations with them leads Mahi to suspect him of cheating. Karam finally confesses to Mahi that he did his job out of financial need, and Mahi sympathizes with him. When Mahi and Karam confront Wji for his blackmail, the latter retaliates by attempting to frame Karam for Pooja’s apparent murder. This plan fails when Karam reveals the truth behind Pooja to everyone, after which Rajpal arrests Wji for his deception.

Cast

• Ayushmann Khurrana as Karamveer "Karam" Singh / Pooja
• Annu Kapoor as Jagjit Singh, Karam's father
• Manjot Singh as Smiley Singh Dhillon, Karam's best friend
• Nushrratt Bharuccha as Mahi Rajput, Karam's girlfriend-turned fiancé
• Abhishek Banerjee as Mahinder Rajput, Mahi’s brother
• Neela Mulherkar as Dadi, Mahi’s grandmother
• Rajesh Sharma as Mauji a.k.a. "W-ji", Karam's boss
• Vijay Raaz as P. C. Rajpal Kirar
• Neha Saraf as Chandrakanta Kirar, Rajpal's wife
• Raj Bhansali as Chintu "Toto" Gujjar, an adolescent who disrespects his parents
• Nidhi Bisht as Roma Gupta, a journalist who despises men due to her failed relationships
• Vedika Bhandari as Pooja, Wji's employee whose identity Karam adopts
• Riteish Deshmukh in song "Dhagala Lagali" (special appearance)^[12]

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.^[13] The lead character will have three accents in the film.^[14] Ahmed Khan is choreographing the dances with Khurrana in sari.^[15]

Principal photography began in December 2018.^[10] Bharucha completed her part of filming in January 2019 in Mumbai.^[16]

Release

The film was released theatrically on 13 September 2019.^[3] ZEE5 acquired digital rights and launched it online on 21 November 2019.^[17][18]

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,^[19] but praised the performances of the supporting cast. The film holds an approval rating of 50% based on 12 reviews on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of 5.6/10.^[20]

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."^[21]

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."^[22] 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."^[23] 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."^[24]

Box office

Dream Girl has the opening day collection of ₹10.05 crore,^[25] 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.^[26] The film has become the eleventh highest-grossing Bollywood film of 2019.^[27]

As of 24 October 2019^[update], with a gross of ₹169.36 crore in India and ₹31.44 crore overseas, the film has grossed ₹200.80 crore worldwide.^[6]

Soundtrack

Dream Girl
Soundtrack album by Meet Bros
Released	6 September 2019[28]
Recorded	2019
Studio	Meet Bros Recording Studio
Genre	Feature film soundtrack
Length	27:32
Language	Hindi
Label	Zee Music Company
External audio Audio Jukebox on YouTube

The music of the film is composed by Meet Bros while lyrics are by Kumaar and Shabbir Ahmed. The remix version of Dada Kondke's "Dhagala Lagali Kala" was removed due to a copyright issue.^[29][30] All soundtracks listed below have their lyrics credited solely to Kumaar unless noted otherwise:

Track listing

No.	Title	Singer(s)	Length
1.	"Radhe Radhe"	Amit Gupta	3:30
2.	"Dil Ka Telephone"	Nakash Aziz, Jonita Gandhi	3:29
3.	"Dhagala Lagali"	Jyotica Tangri, Mika Singh	3:06
4.	"Ik Mulaqaat" (Lyrics by Shabbir Ahmed)	Altamash Faridi, Palak Muchhal	4:07
5.	"Gat Gat"	Jass Zaildar, Khushboo Grewal	3:40
6.	"Radhe Radhe" (Remix)	Amit Gupta, DJ Harshit Shah	2:45
7.	"Dil Ka Telephone" (Remix)	Nakash Aziz, Jonita Gandhi	3:16
8.	"Ik Mulaqaat" (Unplugged)	Ayushmann Khurrana	3:33
Total length:			27:32

References

1. "Pen Marudhar Entertainment acquires the India Distribution rights of these Balaji films". Box office India. 17 June 2019. Archived from the original on 17 June 2019. Retrieved 17 June 2018.
2. "Ayushmann Khurrana's 'Dream Girl' gets its release date". Times of India. 24 February 2019. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
3. Taran Adarsh [@taran_adarsh] (21 February 2019). "Release date finalised... #DreamGirl to release on 13 Sept 2019... Stars Ayushmann Khurrana and Nushrat Bharucha... Directed by Raaj Shaandilyaa... Produced by Shobha Kapoor, Ekta Kapoor and Aashish Singh" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
4. "DREAM GIRL (2019)". British Board of Film Classification. Retrieved 7 September 2019.
5. "'Dream Girl' Box-Office Prediction: Ayushmann's 6th Hit In a Row?". the quint. Retrieved 12 September 2019.^{[permanent dead link‍]}
6. "Dream Girl Box Office". Bollywood Hungama. 13 September 2019. Retrieved 25 October 2019.
7. "'Badhaai Ho' actor Dharmendra to feature opposite Hema Malini in 'Googly'". Latest Indian news, Top Breaking headlines, Today Headlines, Top Stories | Free Press Journal.
8. Rakshit, Nayandeep (16 October 2018). "After AndhaDhun and Badhaai Ho, Dharmendra set for another unique film with Googly". DNA.
9. "Dhramendra and Hema Malini- signed for Googly". Bollywood Hungama. 13 October 2018.^{[dead link‍]}
10. "Ayushmann Khurrana starrer Dream Girl's shooting begins". Indian Express. 3 December 2018. Retrieved 22 May 2019.
11. "Ayushmann Khurrana and Nushrat Bharucha roped in for 'Googly'?". Times of India. 14 October 2018. Retrieved 22 January 2021.
12. "Riteish Deshmukh shakes a leg with Ayushmann Khurrana and Nushrat Bharucha in the recreated version of an iconic Dada Kondke Song". Mumbai Mirror. 22 August 2019. Retrieved 26 August 2019.
13. "Ayushmann Khurrana announces his next film Dream Girl". Indian Express. 30 November 2018. Retrieved 22 May 2019.
14. "'Dream Girl': Ayushmann Khurrana to flaunt three accents in the film". Times of India. 10 December 2018. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
15. "Ahmed Khan to choreograph Ayushmann in Raaj Shaandilyaa Dream Girl". Times of India. 23 May 2019. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
16. "Nushrat Ends Her Shoot for the Upcoming Film Dream Girl on a High, See Pics". News 18. 31 January 2019. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
17. "'Dreamgirl' to premiere on ZEE5 this month". Biz Asia Live. 5 November 2019.
18. "ZEE5 reveals largest content line-up for November". Indian television. 11 November 2019.
19. "Dream Girl Reviews". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 29 September 2019.
20. "Dream Girl". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango. Retrieved 10 October 2021.
21. Thakur, Charu (13 September 2019). "Dream Girl Movie Review: Ayushmann Khurrana film is ROFL all the way. But that's all". India Today. Retrieved 13 September 2019.
22. Gupta, Shubhra (13 September 2019). "Dream Girl movie review: Ayushmann Khurrana saves the day". The Indian Express. Retrieved 13 September 2019.
23. Sinha Jha, Priyanka (14 September 2019). "Dream Girl Movie Review: Is it a woman? Is it a man? No, it's Ayushmann!". News18. Retrieved 14 September 2019.
24. Rangan, Baradwaj (13 September 2019). "Dream Girl Movie Review: Ayushmann Khurrana Stars In An 'Ayushmann Khurrana Comedy' That's His Lamest One Yet". Film Companion. Retrieved 5 August 2019.
25. "Dream Girl Box Office Collection: Ayushmann Khurrana's film off to a good start; earns Rs 10 cr on Day 1". Business Today. 14 September 2019. Retrieved 14 September 2019.
26. "Dream Girl box office collection day 4: Ayushmann Khurrana starrer declared a hit, his fastest film to cross Rs 50 crore". The Hindustan Times. 17 September 2019. Retrieved 17 September 2019.
27. "Bollywood Top Grossers Worldwide Bollywood Hungama". Bollywood Hungama. Retrieved 13 October 2019.
28. "Dream Girl - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack". Jio Saavn. 20 August 2019.
29. "Ayushmann Khurrana's Dream Girl faces copyright issues over Dhagala Lagali song". The Asian Age.
30. "Dream Girl's track Dhagala Lagli Kala removed from digital platforms for violating copyright issues | Bollywood News – India TV". 22 September 2019.

32) Dream Girl 2 Review By Sanjay

External links

• Dream Girl at IMDb
• Dream Girl on Bollywood Hungama
• Dream Girl at Rotten Tomatoes