Doctor G movie review: If a film does not treat its own serious theme with respect, how can we?

Language: Hindi

Cast: Ayushmann Khurrana, Rakul Preet Singh, Sheeba Chadha, Shefali Shah, Abhay Chintamani Mishr     

Director: Anubhuti Kashyap

Star rating: 2.5/5

Having played a sperm donor in Vicky Donor (2012), a man with erectile dysfunction in Shubh Mangal Saavdhan (2017) and a youngster struggling to come to terms with his premature baldness in Bala (2019), Ayushmann Khurrana is now dealing with a different set of body parts and bodily functions – except that this time they are not his. His new film in theatres, Doctor G, is about a medico who wants to specialise in orthopaedics but secures admission for a post-graduation in gynaecology. Instead of immersing himself in his work and studies, he decides to bide his time in the department while preparing to take the entrance exam again. Why? Because his narrow, traditionalist, patronising worldview dictates that gynaecology is a branch of medicine that is of women, for women and by women.

Uday shares a home with his mother in Bhopal. His early struggles with women patients in a local government hospital are as much to do with the fact that he takes gynaecology lightly as with the women’s unwillingness to see a male doctor. As the only man among them, he finds himself trivialised by his classmates too since they are convinced he will not stick around. The HoD, Dr Nandini Srivastava (Shefali Shah) is tough on him because she sees that he is not sincere about this stream. Meanwhile, Uday complicates matters further by falling for his classmate, Dr Fatima (Rakul Preet Singh).

Debutant director Anubhuti Kashyap’s Doctor G joins Dr Uday Gupta on the rocky road from reluctance to awakening and ultimately, complete commitment.

The latter – complete commitment – is what Doctor G itself lacks. The theme inevitably yields several crucial conversations and plenty of laughter. The actors and writers (screenplay: Sumit Saxena, Saurabh Bharat, Vishal Wagh and Anubhuti Kashyap herself) give the hospital a real feel without drowning us in medical jargon. But while the film has remarkable clarity on certain matters, it is fuzzy in its exposition of too much else.

For instance, without turning the narrative into a textbook or a lecture, it does a spiffing job of explaining why Uday should not have examined a patient while alone in a room with her, the risks of an abortion on a minor and the protocols mandated in such a case. Nandini repeatedly tells Uday that to become a good gynaecologist he must “lose the male touch”, while his classmates emphasise the need to make his patients feel comfortable around him. Yet a scene that appears designed to be comical involves Uday actually smacking a woman in labour who grabs his wrist, misconduct for which he is not chided by anyone. Mistreatment of mothers-to-be and a dismissive attitude to women’s pain is not uncommon in hospital settings, and here comes a film that features such a scene even while positioning itself as an awareness builder.

The writers do well in keeping Uday consistent in his position on the morality of a sexual relationship between an adult and a minor in the film. However, there is no physical force involved in the latter, but the script leaves the meaning of statutory rape and the need for such a law unclear. This is an opportunity lost, considering the continuing social resistance to progressive legal definitions of consent.

(Minor spoiler in this paragraph) As a layperson, while watching Uday oversee an emergency delivery in a hospital corridor, I could not help but wonder why the mother’s dignity was not preserved despite the constraints of the situation and that space. Were there no screens available in the entire hospital, and not a single staffer available to bring screens to the spot instead of allowing a crowd to gape while a woman popped out a baby in public? Uday is reprimanded for that episode, but for very different reasons. (Spoiler alert ends)

The script seems to be swimming along well in normalising a Muslim and a Tamilian in Uday’s class…till it does not. The reason for Fatima’s hesitation regarding Uday remains ambiguous. You don’t hear women, he is told by more than one woman in his life. While it is true that Uday is an absolute jerk when we first meet him, to be fair to him in this instance, I was not entirely sure I could hear Fatima either – that she does not want to commit to him is plainly stated, what is blurred is why. This is particularly noticeable because Uday’s mother states in black and white that religious differences are not an issue. Of course, this is the standard and safe Hindu-man-plus-woman-from-a-minority-community that inter-community romances in Bollywood usually are, but that is a separate discussion. More glaring is the totally silly mention of Rajinikanth stuffed into a line delivered by the Tamilian lady because in the Gospel According to Bollywood, apparently that is what all Tamilians do. Not so cool after all, huh, Team Doctor G?

The one character written with depth and lucidity throughout is Uday’s lively widowed mother played by the formidable Sheeba Chadha who, here, tops even the diffident yet ultimately rock-solid Mom she was in Badhaai Do earlier this year. Her graph and Uday’s relationship with her form the most consistent thread in Doctor G.

Just when it appears that Doctor G has got its act together though, it wraps up with a ridiculous song accompanying the end credits that, in its filming, completely contradicts everything that had been said so far. Doctor G is the story of a man who learns to take women seriously. And along comes this song, with Uday/Ayushmann in baggy doctor’s garb singing Mera dil dhak dhak karta hai surrounded by women in tight, tiny attire in the same colour combination while Fatima/Rakul in a figure-hugging, revealing outfit heaves her bosom and thrusts it towards him as he lies down.

If a film does not treat its own chosen theme with respect, how can we?

Rating: 2.5 (out of 5 stars) 

Doctor G is now in theatres.

Anna M.M. Vetticad is an award-winning journalist and author of The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic. She specialises in the intersection of cinema with feminist and other socio-political concerns. Twitter: @annavetticad, Instagram: @annammvetticad, Facebook: AnnaMMVetticadOfficial

Read all the Latest News, Trending News, Cricket News, Bollywood News, India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.