Rating : Below average (2/5)
Genre : Drama
Year : 2014
Running time : 1 hours 40 minutes
Director : Abhishek Dogra
Cast : Sonam Kapoor, Rajkumar Rao, Pulkit Samrat, Archana Puran Singh
Dolly ki Doli is a movie which isn’t very good and it’s not so bad. I was very disappointed by it; I was expecting so much more.
If you have watched the trailer, you know that Dolly (Kapoor) and her gang dupe young men and their families into marriage and then make off with the families’ wealth. While she dupes a number of such men, we get to see two of these incidents up-close. The first is of Haryanvi farmer Sonu Sehrawat(Rao) and the second is of city boy Manjot (Varun Sharma), and both men are smitten with the lovely Dolly. There is also a third wheel – Inspector Robin Singh (Samrat) who is brought in to catch the “Looteri Dulhan”.
This movie is an Arbaaz Khan production, but feels like some low-budget, almost C grade film by a newbie director who’s managed to rope in 1 big star. Khan also produced Dabangg (1 & 2) and generally his work has decent production values. But Dolly ki Doli has poor production values, and is very underwhelming. The film has a very whimsical plot, as in no one has though too much about it – not the writer, not the producer and not the director. The characters display little intelligence, conviction or understanding of why they do what they do – they just seem to do it. The movie has a lackluster cast, and songs I will not remember. The screenplay is laggardly; there is only so much repetitive match-making I can take.
Sonam is the only star here, and while she looks beautiful, she cannot quite carry a film on her own. I often get into mini-arguments with people over whether Sonam can act. I say she can, and I point them to Delhi-6. With this film though, I stand defenceless, because Kapoor has made such a hash of it; she waltzes through the film, snug in her own privileged Manish Malhotra-clad cocoon, impervious to all demands of acting. Rajkumar Rao as Sonu Sehrawat is entertaining to watch, because he is a very fine actor. I can’t say the same for Varun Sharma; I wouldn’t quite care to watch him on screen ever again. Then there is Pulkit Samrat, who did well in Fukrey, but isn’t very impressive here.
Dolly ki Doli feels like it was shot on a small, stringent budget. What little money Khan deigns to spend, he spends on the (totally forced) item number, and on Dolly’s bridal costumes. The movie feels like a tv serial, with a very glamorous heroine. It does have a simplicity (shoe-string budget, remember?), but I wouldn’t care to pay for it at the theater. The film is being marketed as a jolly, colorful, energetic romp, but Dolly ki Doli offers nothing – no likeable characters, no love-story, no genuine emotion, no real drama and no satisfaction.
I dragged my husband to this film, and now I owe him one. Let that not be your fate 🙂 .
Kidwise: If you ignore Malaika Arora Khan’s suggestive item number, this film is fairly clean. But with that song, this is PG-13.
