Dolly Ki Doli could have been so many things - a sleek heist film in time-honored masala traditions, a dark comedy set against the backdrop of The Grand Indian Wedding, or a thrilling police procedural involving a mysterious Looteri Dulhan. It ends up being a boring wannabe comedy that doesn't even try to wrestle a few easy laughs.
Producer Arbaaz Khan's support for a newbie director is both commendable and puzzling. Did he spot a glimmer of talent that just fell through in the course of making this film, or has he, after milking the success of Dabbang for some easy money in that lazy sequel, just decided that directors are not all that important and hired a fresher to trim down the budget? In either case, the gamble hasn't paid off.
The film starts with an interesting premise - a con-woman
whose modus operandi is to convince young men to marry her, and make
away the next morning with the family’s jewels. She does all this with the help of her gang, a motley group of people who pose as her family for the purpose of the matrimonial transactions. The film flounders, mainly on
two fronts – the unimaginative writing and an editor sleeping on the job.
Writing
In Hindi cinema, we have seen dozens of stories about
confidence tricksters, and as masala entertainment goes, the premise can
deliver some sparkling fun moments. Much of the fun quotient of course, hangs
from the charisma of the leading star. We have seen Hema Malini (Johnny Mera
Naam), Neetu Singh (Parvarish), Zeenat Aman (Chori Mera Kaam) and most recently
Rani Mukherji (Bunty Aur Babli) pull off a heist in style. I haven’t seen much
of Sonam Kapoor’s work to really judge here, but Dolly just does not have that
charm.
In part at least, the fault must lie with the writers, who have given no
discernible personality to the leading lady, or for that matter to any of the
gang members. We just know that the young man who poses as her younger brother
is no longer enjoying that role, because he got a little crush on his Dolly
Didi. She humours him without reciprocating his feelings, but also without
stringing him along. This honesty is one of the two redeeming qualities given
to the lead character. The other is her niceness to poor young girls.
But what brings this motley gang together? What binds them? What
does each of them contribute to their operation, besides playing an assigned
part? The few scenes we are given where we see the gang interacting amongst each
other fall completely flat.
Secondly, a heist film has the chance to really engage the
viewer by getting into the behind-the-scenes effort that goes into pulling a
heist. Khosla Ka Ghosla and Ladies Vs Ricky Bahl work mainly thanks to the
simple devices of getting viewers in on the planning – all the little details
that need to be worked out, the simple yet effective tricks employed to put on
a convincing show, the rehearsals, the practical hurdles, unaccounted surprises that threaten to ruin it all, the quick improvisations…
Dolly Ki Doli offers none of these, and simply skims through about a dozen
wedding montages.
How do the gang manage to throw such lavish wedding parties? How do you fool a real Punjabi family using just garish clothes and turbans? When the films allows me the time to ponder over such questions, any semblance of credibility goes out the window.
Similarly when her victims pull a reverse con on her, you never sense the temerity of ordinary blokes trying to outsmart a group of career tricksters, nor the slightest glimpse of the cogs and wheels moving in the police machinery to get a job done - all it takes is one outrageously unbelievable poster on a shop window. Why the hell couldn't anybody come up with this earlier?
If making the film realistic isn’t your priority (and there’s
no rule that it should be), another way to make this kind of story riveting is
to go all out on the masala route, delivering surprises thick and fast, but
much of that depends on the post-production – mainly sound design and editing,
so more on that later.
Side note – the virgin whore
In the 80’s film Bhagwaan Dada that had Rajanikant as the
titular larger-than-life hero, Rakesh Roshan as the lovable underling and a
young Hrithik Roshan as a tragic child artist, Sridevi played a much more risqué
con-woman – she plays a fake prostitute who dupes willing customers out of
their money without ever putting out. The last bit must have felt particularly
important to
the filmmakers who did not trust the 80s audience to accept a lead actress who
is not a virgin. We may love and adore our consters, thugs, burglars and even
murderers, but we draw the line when it comes to the sanctity of the vagina.
Dolly
Ki Doli is old-school in this aspect – our Looteri Dulhan makes all kinds of
excuses to avoid sleeping with her victims on their first night; the guys aren’t
even allowed to kiss her before the wedding. Maybe this has been a conscious
decision in order to keep this a family-friendly comedy. Maybe it’s a deliberate
counter to the now-too-common sight of sexually liberated young women in films.
Or maybe it is in line with Sonam’s adherence to a clean image – for all her posturing
as a fashion diva, the young actress seems extra careful to not show too much
skin, much like her contemporary Sonakshi Sinha. Is this the new trend among young leading
ladies now?
Whatever
the reason behind the choice, this is another comic opportunity squandered in
an aspiring comedy already thin on laughs. The wedding night scenes with a fake
bride trying to get away with her virtue untarnished; and a young man hoping to
finally get some action after months of courting a gorgeous woman, unaware of
the sedatives he’s just gulped down with milk slowly working its way through
his system – this could be comic gold, with some good old-fashioned slapstick.
Instead what we get is a flat menstruation-related excuse. Lame.
Editing
If
Khosla Ka Ghosla and Ladies Vs Ricky Bahl sweated to feel credible, films like
Bunty Aur Babli, Bluffmaster and just about any heist film with Dev Anand,
Amitabh Bacchan, Vinod Khanna or Shashi Kapoor carry themselves off purely on
panache. Sadly, even that is missing in Dolly Ki Doli, and here I blame the
editor more than anybody.
Even
with uninspired writing and mundane performance, some bit of creativity at the
editing table could have paced up the film.
Just for an example, when we see
Dolly pulling her first con within the timeframe of the movie, she is presented
as a sweet traditional girl marrying a young man of her choosing and making the
right moves to impress her new in-laws. At this point, we the audience are
unaware of Dolly’s real motives – never mind that the plot that is about to
unravel has been broadcast via trailers already. So when the next morning the
family wakes up to find the bride gone and their family jewels missing, it
should ideally land as a big punch.
Here,
a quick cut to Dolly and her gang, who till now we thought to be her family,
zooming away in their car and clubbing away with their victims' money would have been many times more effective than what
we actually get on screen – long, lazily unravelling scenes of the duped family
comprehending their situation, and at least two completely disposable scenes.
This is then followed by an equally cold interchange between some random cop
getting instruction from a senior officer to pursue this mysterious girl called
Dolly who’s been going about marrying people without ever getting caught on
camera. It is after this that the get-away song finally appears, at least 15
minutes past its moment.
Much
later in the film, when some of Dolly’s victims gang up on her and arrange to
entrap her using a wealthy suitor as bait, again, the reverse con never manages
to convince me as audience for a minute, and its cover is blown off way too
soon to register any surprise. It is here too that another nugget of
information is delivered – the cop who has been trying to nab Dolly has a past
connection with her. Here too, neither the camera work, nor the background
music help in any way to register any sort of ‘twist’ in the proceedings, too
say nothing of Sonam’s stiff facial expressions. There is simply a cold
transition to a flashback montage in a song.
Most curiously, it is in this flashback
montage that the editor finally goes for some brevity, where for once a little
more exposition could have actually worked to make a full emotional impact. I’m
starting to think now that editor Hemal Kothari has perhaps been trying some
sort of experiment by employing exposition where brevity is normally expected
and vice versa. If that is the case, it is a failed experiment.
