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‘Dhoom Dhaam’ Movie Review: A Dysfunctional Marriage of Genres
Starring Yami Gautam Dhar and Pratik Gandhi, 'Dhoom Dhaam' stays glued to the middle lane.
Director: Rishab Seth
Writers: Aditya Dhar, Rishab Seth, Aarsh Vohra
Cast: Pratik Gandhi, Yami Gautam Dhar, Aijaz Khan, Pavitra Sarkar, Kevin Dave, Mukul Chadda, Garima Yajnik
Streaming on: Netflix
Language: Hindi
Hindi cinema can be middling in two ways. The first way is common — a movie settles for mediocrity despite a decent idea. The second way is not as common — a movie strives for mediocrity when the idea gets greedy. Dhoom Dhaam somehow manages to uphold both ways at once. It’s disappointing because it could’ve been better, but it’s also fine because it could’ve been worse. The one thing that’s undeniable, however, is the conveyor-belt nature of the modern streaming picture. Every time it threatens to be enjoyable, a peculiar factory-produced tone emerges.
The story here is a romantic comedy: Mr. Chalk and Ms. Cheese have an arranged marriage only to belatedly discover their differences. They’re nothing like the eligible partners their families “advertised” them as. The more they learn about each other, the more complicated it becomes. Hidden faults jump out; either they’ll fall for each other or fall apart. The USP of Dhoom Dhaam is that this entire marital journey — which might take years or decades in the real world — is condensed into 24 chaotic hours featuring shady cops, possible gangsters, a masked robbery gone wrong, a mysterious package called Charlie, a horny dog, a kidnapped uncle, and a bunch of chases and escapes across Mumbai. In short, the cross-cultural romcom is accelerated by the black comedy.
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Unfortunately, this marriage of genres is just as dysfunctional as the couple it follows. The two identities squabble with each other instead of feeding off one another; they simply refuse to co-inhabit the same space. It’s a Netflix tradition of sorts — a film is reduced to a disjointed and algorithmic sum of its parts.
Macho Gujarati veterinarian Veer Poddar (Pratik Gandhi) and soft-spoken Punjabi liver Koyal Chaddha (Yami Gautam Dhar) get married within two weeks of their rishta meeting. They are smitten; he likes all her curated Instagram posts, she likes that he likes everything. But their precoital facade is exposed by a knock on their hotel door on their wedding night. Two mean-looking chaps named Sathe (Aijaz Khan) and Bhide (Pavitra Sarkar) barge in and threaten Veer, demanding to know where ‘Charlie’ is. Veer and Koyal panic, enter crisis mode and go on the run during an elaborate obstacle course of a night that’s designed to subvert gender norms and reveal their true colours.
It’s on the nose, of course. Veer (meaning “brave”) shows that he’s anything but brave; the Ahmedabad native is agoraphobic, claustrophobic, scared of heights, sanitises his hands before touching a steering wheel, follows traffic rules during a high-speed chase, finds himself donning fluffy bathroom slippers and criticises the ‘lawlessness’ of Mumbai. Koyal (meaning “cuckoo”) reveals herself to be just that: a bit cuckoo, loud, brave, reckless, passionate, violent and full of feminist (and borderline-sociopathic) rage. She spends the first few hours rescuing Veer, fending off baddies and watching his cowardice, mouth agape. He can’t believe how crude and free-spirited she is; she can’t fathom his quivering beta masculinity.
But Dhoom Dhaam runs out of this fun gimmick quickly. What’s left, then, is a series of random misadventures — the sort of formula Kunal Khemu comedies thrive on — that feel too cleanly interspersed with the romantic awakening of the couple. Usually the action activates the love story, but here the two fail to multitask. The chase takes a pause every time Veer and Koyal have a serious moment. It’s like watching a rough edit without transitions or rhythm. For instance, when they reach a nightclub to track a friend down, the film dutifully offers Koyal a monologue about the challenges of being an Indian woman. Only once she’s finished do they enter the place, and the plot is allowed to continue. Her outburst feels like an abrupt interval rather than an actual element of the film. Later on, Veer, who is regressive and traditional, offers nuggets of wokeness to a weeping Koyal; the scene looks isolated from a film that’s determined to be sensitive. When New Year’s eve fireworks go off, the couple who’ve escaped to the top of an under-construction building stop to admire the spectacle and soften with a love song. Time stands still — just not in a good way.
This keeps happening, the most jarring of them featuring their encounter with an older Muslim couple who literally feed them dinner while offering anecdotes about marriage. Charlie can wait. The enemies can wait. Your popcorn can wait. This slot-in nature of the script is calculative, a quirky crime-caper checklist derived from past formulas. Their experiences range from a perilous balcony set piece, an unnecessary brawl in a nightclub toilet, an unfunny encounter with a toxic ex, a semi-funny encounter with a foodie friend, and a stripclub sequence at a bachelorette party where Veer reluctantly bares his toned body and impresses his wife. The irony is that, for all its messaging about gender stereotypes, Koyal grows feelings for Veer once he displays the ultra-masculine traits of power, badassery and the defense of her honour. Otherwise, he was just an emasculated wuss in her eyes. Suri from Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi (2008) does not appreciate her hypocrisy.
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As much as I like Pratik Gandhi and his commitment to the meek-Indian-hubby canon, his Veer is downsized into a one-trick pony. He has more gears, evident in marital dramas like Do Aur Do Pyaar and physical comedies like Madgaon Express. None of them are used in Dhoom Dhaam — except when Veer defends his vegetarianism with “I’m an animal doctor, I can’t eat my patients” — because the film remains firmly devoted to Yami Gautam Dhar’s Koyal. While the actor displays shades of her scene-stealing turn in Bala (2019), she ultimately bites off more than she can chew. Koyal is the kind of mercurial Taapsee Pannu-coded (in Netflix terminology: Radhika Apte-coded) hero that drives the unpredictability of the film. But her aggression is almost too theatrical; it’s rebellion for the sake of rebellion. At times, Koyal seems like she’s emoting in a slasher thriller. At times, she plays the unapologetic woman as someone who behaves like a man. It’s an uneven performance in a film that gives her the big swings.
The supporting cast — especially Aijaz Khan as the bulky Marathi hooligan-cop — adds some colour, but the core premise loses shape. A mistaken-identity twist makes little sense, despite the old-school pulpiness of the climax. It doesn’t help that the couple ends up sharing sibling chemistry. When you consider that happy couples often tend to resemble each other, it’s not a bad touch. But as an arranged-marriage odyssey unfolding over one night, it’s weird. For a film shot mostly at night, it’s also visually conservative. Mumbai could be any city. Koyal gets the better lines, like when she sees two Gujarati characters bond over snacks and mutters: “this is a sex chat between flour and split milk”. These little wins hint at the spark that the writing sacrifices in pursuit of almost-entertainment and unsubtle restaurant promotions.
The title is nice, though. “Dhoom Dhaam” signifies the sound of a wedding celebration as well as the noise of bullets and bombs. It lives by the sword of meaning two things at once, but dies by the sword of being stranded between two genres. It’s the sound of cinema that morphs into the white noise of streaming.
If this film were a person, it’d be a middle-class hero in a mid-budget production that gets mixed reviews and middle billing in a week full of re-releases and remakes. If it were a child, it’d be the harmless and low-stakes middle sibling in a family of superstars and black sheep. If it were an argument, it’d be the fence that centrists sit on. If it were a highway, it’d be the divider. I can go on with the silly analogies and puns, but you get the gist. Dhoom Dhaam has a point, but it’s a mid-point.