‘Dream Girl’ trailer proves Ayushmann Khurrana is not afraid to take the leap

Dream Girl was the epithet reserved for the one and only Hema Malini. It seems we now have a new Dream Girl.

Ayushmann Khurrana has a truckload of fun in the trailer of Dream Girl, an out-and-out  comedy directed by first-timer Raaj Shandilya. Ayushmann plays a straight man who doesn’t fear exploring the feminine side of his personality. When the terrific trailer  opens we see Ayushmann making a late entry as Sita in an open-air Ramayan performance. Before the trailer ends, he reminds us that if the Mahabharata had happened in the era of  #MeToo, some characters would have been in jail.

The dialogues are cutting and quirky,  hilarious without trying to be over-cute or  consciously subtle. As his phone-sex  avatar Pooja, Ayushmann moulds his own voice to a feminine treble and comes out sounding disturbingly sexy. In fact the trailer shows him collecting a slew of admirers of both sexes.

Undoubtedly,  Dream Girl would be one of the  funniest films of 2019. Among the  many things that I look forward to is the coming together of Ayushmann Khurrana and Anu Kapoor once again after Vicky Donor. In the earlier film, Kapoor urged Ayushmann to become a sperm donor. Here he encourages Ayushmann to masquerade as a woman on the phone for business purposes.

The trailer had me laughing hard at its irreverent tone and audacious attitude. There  is an Emraan Hashmi joke and a Diana Penty joke tucked in the folds of its furious humour. I  advise the entire film industry and the nation by extension to develop a sense of humour before Dream Girl releases in September. Otherwise there will be a whole lot of righteous Indians gunning for film that doesn’t care whom it offends, as long as it does offend those who think they are custodians of the nation’s morality.