Dunki is high on ambition but its flimsy premise renders this nearly three hours long journey into farfetched adventures hard to believe, harder to buy into, observes Sukanya Verma.

Once when quizzed why Vidhu Vinod Chopra didn’t direct his home production, Munnabhai MBBS, he answered, this film needed Raju Hirani and only Raju Hirani.

Dunki, which marks Raju’s first outing outside the VVC stable, has the Hirani trademarks all over.

What’s in little supply is his touch.

In Hirani’s artless worldview, nothing is too serious and all of life’s greatest challenges can be made light of an alongside an unabashed emotionality that treats tears as torchbearers of humanity. The film-maker’s tendency to get carried away and pull out all the stops to reach out to the emotional fools in the audience tries a tad too hard in Dunki.

Few make sniffing to the sound of sentimentality worth it like Shah Rukh Khan.

But after a dynamic dose of patriotism in Pathaan, swaggering show of vigilantism in Jawan, his turn as a delivery boy facilitating illegal entry of his foolish cronies in and out of India fails to strike a chord.

Dunki is high on ambition but its flimsy premise, which makes illegal immigration seem as simple as Aamir Khan and his band of buddies gatecrashing a wedding party in 3 Idiots renders this nearly three hours long journey into farfetched adventures hard to believe, harder to buy into.

Where most would be languishing behind bars if caught, a British judge in Dunki apologetically concurs, ‘You’re a noble guy.’

Dunki wants to make a case for desperate, needy folks running off to first world countries for better prospects but in his preoccupation with ’90s style sitcom humour and excessive schmaltz cannot establish a solid reason for us to feel bad about the situation.

Led by SRK in a role that shatters the NRI dream he so lovingly built in his celluloid prime, the cast delivers the goods at hand but cannot convey the bonhomie of a real friendship or lifetime long love.

More than its foolhardy protagonists, Dunki carries the baggage of a script that’s going nowhere.

Longer review follows soon.

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