Anupama Chopra reviews Don’t Be Shy, the directorial debut of Sreeti Mukerji, backed by Alia Bhatt’s Eternal Sunshine Productions. Aarushi Bajaj plays Shyamili ‘Shy’ Das, an ambitious college student with a meticulously planned future involving an IIM scholarship, a wealthy husband and a CEO’s chair. But her determination to engineer the perfect life strains her relationships with her parents, friends and boyfriend in this coming-of-age film on Prime Video.
Anupama examines the film’s familiar college-romance tropes, the influence of Karan Johar’s cinema and stylistic flourishes that range from fourth-wall breaks to deliberately exposed filmmaking tricks. While she appreciates Aarushi’s expressive performance, a few moments of authentic emotion and appearances by Anurag Basu and Kunaal Roy Kapur, she finds the writing lacklustre, the characters bland and the plotting awkward. Its ideas about control, ambition and the dysfunction behind perfect images are lost in simplistic life lessons. The THR Bottomline: Don’t Be Shy is too flat and forced.