Ayushmann Khurrana’s Dream Girl 2 to Rajkummar Rao in Guns & Gulaabs: New-age hero is suffering from far too many quirk

The problem with Ayushmann Khurrana’s Dream Girl 2 isn’t in its design, but in its syntax. Crossdressing is a fairly mainstream phenomenon – with a decades’ worth of history in our cinema-  but in Khuranna’s latest it feels like that painfully crass ritual that a woke actor is having to stretch to the point of cartoonish lucidity. It’s a giddy, punchline-packed film that has more in common with an episode of Kapil Sharma than with some of the more iconic comic films of the past. That it has recorded Khurrana’s best opening yet, tells a story itself.

By using both Pathaan and Gadar as callouts, Dream Girl 2 also admits to playing second-fiddle to the beast; the kind of filming history, it is willing to admit, it won’t be able to replicate. It’s also an admission that paints a broader picture of that search for next elusive superstar. Our most acclaimed new-age actors are stuck in a comedic rut. Not because they are poor at it, but because it has become their solitary trick at some elusive mainstream approval. And while there might be the one-off success in there somewhere, it doesn’t promise a whole lot else. At least not stardom like we know it.

Rajkummar Rao, most recently played Panna Tipu, the comedic charm of the Netflix’s somewhat tepid Guns & Gulaabs. The actor who started out as an intense, popularly methodical performer, has now become a comedic maverick of sorts. He is the highlight of a ponderous show with an excruciating dull middle. Vicky Kaushal, not too long ago was in Zara Hatke Zara Bachke, another film that mimes the eccentricities of a small-town family and its adjacent quirks. With months between these releases, there is a clear trajectory, or at least a bracket beginning to emerge that doesn’t augur well for a promising troika.

In their own ways, Khurrana, Kaushal and Rao are all stars, having produced credible work in the years that they have been active. Work that might have led to deserved acclaim but is yet to translate to box-office numbers, or reach, that places them on publically-endorsed pedestals. It’s one thing to make a good film, it’s another to draw crowds to the cinemas. The making of a bonafide movie star is defined by that exotic, inexplicable quality that only his or her fans can fully articulate. It’s also defined by the kind of cinema you foster and ferment into the imagination of the audience. Quirky, small-town men are charming anecdotes from an unseen India, but to most of the country watching, they are also relatable, and therefore forgettable men next door. These are decent performances in their own right, but hardly as memorable as an iconic, maybe even distant character ought to be. It’s trivialisation by grounding.

The fact that even an ageing, half-bent Sunny Deol has managed to stir the theatrical cash register, points to an eco-system relying on nostalgia to reclaim that austerity of the megastar. The 90s’ continued relevance hints at recall, but also at the fact that the younger generation today, is looking for icons and role models elsewhere. In an ocean full of content, comedy, it’s ubiquity in terms of a contextualised internet, is gradually diminishing in its theatrical influence. Ye,  it might spawn franchises like Dream Girl, Stree and others, but it won’t ever create that standstill moment of cinematic inequity, where one script, one movie, one character, or even one moment, rises above the rest. It’s probably why when the Khans were dictating the box-office in the 90s, Govinda, stuck to his quirky, idiosyncratic cinema to middling effect. He might be an antique today, but back then he was the comedic relief, to the mainstream’s more mannered design. It’s the vacuum, the sort of enjoyable but also forgettable plate, that the new-age actor has turned to fill. This is obviously not a criticism of their performances or even their films, but merely the interpretation of a pattern that attests to both, our history and future.

Khurrana’s crossdressing gimmicks in Dream Girl are laudable in a sense, but nothing about it feels ingenious or even path-breaking. In fact, it’s possibly the actor’s crassest film yet, which makes it a mainstream reckoner. Should it grow in numbers, it might suggest a grammar that can be followed. The problem though is that the audience that made these actors into recognisable stars, is only a small fraction of the country that christens kings and conquerors. Kaushal has comparatively, tasted mainstream success at the theatres with URI – he might do so again with Sam Bahadur – but his roles since echo the choices, or maybe the limitations, of the other two. It’s indicative of the low-hanging but maybe only fruit available on a branch that is still seeking the foundation that produces epochal megastars. As Govinda might tell you, it’s unlikely to happen through quirky comedies.