Dunki Review

A Rajkumar Hirani film is about as close to a Christmas movie as an Indian film can get - cheery, wholesome, with characters brimming with sweet innocence. Whether it's about a gangster-doctor (Munnabhai MBBS, 2003) or a literal alien (PK, 2014), a Hirani film is inoffensive and family-oriented - the film equivalent of a hearty stew. It's all about "serious things told in an entertaining way", as Hirani himself puts it. Dunki is unmistakably a Hirani film, but one that feels both stale and plasticky.

Dunki has a distinct 2000s vibe, and not just because the story is set during the time of landlines and envelope letters, when middle-class Indians began immigrating to a "foreign" country in full earnest. Three small-town friends, Manu (Tapsee Pannu), Baggu and Balli, dream of going to London to settle their families but discover that getting a Visa is no easy task. Either they must learn English, pass their IELTS and get a student visa, or they take the "Dunki" - the "donkey-route". So terrible are their English-learning prospects that they choose this illegal way to smuggle themselves into the UK by passing through Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey, dodging bullets and cops. Helping them is "Coach" Hardy (Shah Rukh Khan), a man who incidentally crosses paths with Manu, falls hard for her, and makes her immigration dream his dream too.

There is a faint outline of a hard-hitting story about the treacherous conditions that migrants face, but Dunki would rather not spoil our holiday cheer with a sob story. Instead, it tosses in dad jokes at every opportunity. Jokes that we are all now too old or too Reddit-pilled to be amused by. There is that English-vinglish humour - the usual "aargh, English is such a confusing language" bit that is entirely predictable. Boman Irani (who else?) plays a snooty English coach who uses songs to teach tough words. By the end of class, the students are dancing to the words: "I want to go to the LAVATORY."

Amid the silly humour, there are ill-placed outbursts of righteous anger about migrant issues. There is a rant about how unfair it is that Indians have to learn English to go to the UK when the English never bothered learning Hindi when they landed on our shores... 200 years ago? Such high-schooler-level reasoning is deployed artlessly throughout the movie. There is a sob-filled exposition about how unfair borders are, how unfair the concept of immigration. Someone says something about "Russian birds flapping down to Bhuj for their annual migration" and then asks "do Indian birds stop them?" Do birds hold court and stamp big red blocks of 'DENIED' on their migration applications? This is the sort of juvenile logic Dunki drops on us, with utter seriousness.

For all the rabble-rousing Dunki does to set up for a more exciting second half, it fails to deliver a single potent scene. The screenplay rushes through the heart of the film - a perilous journey that the four friends must go on, traversing deserts and seas - eager to swipe through their hardships. Bullets, rape threats, stinking shipping containers - it's all a blur of sadness that the screenplay is too cowardly to fully explore. At least one imagines that the final payoff will be epic, but it instead fizzles into pointlessness.

Shah Rukh Khan's refusal to act his age is never more apparent than in Dunki, where he flips between a youngster romancing Taapsee and a very old man wearing wigs and wrinkles. But this is hardly a reason to crib - he is okay-looking as a young man, with the de-aging job done solidly on him. Instead, the niggle I had with his character is how his real-life brand as a true-blue-patriotic Indian - a brand he has carefully cultivated through scripts like Pathaan and Jawaan - once again asserts itself in a wholly transparent way in this script.

Tapsee Pannu is in her element with the Punjabi-accented dialogues, and she effortlessly pulls off the hardy role of Mannu. And she just about manages to not look like SRK's sister or daughter. Vikram Kocchar as Buggu is right on the money with his comedic timing, making even the juvenile jokes land with a zing.

Pritam's music is the only element made better by its simplicity. The old-fashioned melody of "Oh Manu" or the playfulness of "lutt putt" do put a smile on your face. The saturated colours of the visuals do wonders to lift your spirits, and make everything rest easy on the eyes even when the content is not easy on the brain.

Vicky Kaushal makes a brief appearance but impactful enough that you spend the rest of the movie wishing he came back.

So much of Dunki's story gets spoiled by silly little twists and shockers that ultimately are unnecessary and even detrimental to the film. This may be one of Rajkumar Hirani's weakest films.