Dolly Ki Doli: Incomplete Intentions

The director who wishes to cast Sonam Kapoor in his/her next should watch her performance in Mausam instead of Khoobsurat or Dolly Ki Doli. Presumably, that was her faintest reminder of carrying a film in addition to Delhi 6 without the burden of being a pretty face. She comes up with a film or two a year, like her male contemporaries with plots that surround her. She stays in the most opulent of localities in cities, looks her toned-best and the immediate plan is to start shopping. She wants to have 'fun'. Dolly Ki Doli further confirms this machine-modeled 'chick-flick' intention where there's minimal craft and maximal sugar-coating to possibly underplay a contrived plot.

With films such as Dolly Ki Doli, reminding of a similar misfire like Daawat-E-Ishq, you don't quite know what to take home. The metropolitan escapism where life is just a party? Is it the generalization of a gender or a society altogether? Taking off as a theme, the movie borrows its seed idea from Maneesh Kumar's Ladies Vs Ricky Bahl. The film does a mini gender-reversal with the former and the title is sufficient enough to indicate its female centric nature.

The men queue up and rally around the only woman here. It runs for a surprisingly crisp 100 minutes, a revelation at least in the context of a conventional Indian film inclusive of typical candy floss romance, dance and party numbers. Sadly, even a three hour narrative couldn't have convinced you of the first-timer Abhishek Dogra's content. His characters are just random colourful sketches without basis.

Rajkumar Rao takes a surprising turn as an actor in contrast to his roles in the past. He frees himself off all the formal talk that's stereotyped with his persona. Varun Sharma tries hard to add his spin to a part dedicated to Salman Khan's Robin Hood Pandey act. But, most of these are bearable individual pieces and don't add great value to the film.

The most embarrassing moments of Dolly Ki Doli are saved for the second hour. The film ends with a shamelessly manipulative moment of Sonam gifting her ear rings to a girl who's begging in a railway station. Was it to show that she was a con-woman with a heart? Sorry, you may need a sequel to understand that? That's precisely, you have a set of makers, who do nothing but for assembling glorified reruns of similar ideas and not a back story that was crying to be told. They found time for a Malaika Arora number in the mask of being situational. Oops, that's for the producer?

Dolly Ki Doli is too happy being in its imaginary soulless space. The film ends with a note that all of this is happening just for fun. All the crying, justification Dolly gives may also be just that. If she's so happy living her life, why bother to make it a film? Don't you miss a Nupur Asthana here, who could have made you fallen in love with her instead?

Two stars Review by Srivathsan N

Dolly Ki Doli: Incomplete Intentions

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