Dunki Review: Shah Rukh Khan-Starrer Makes you Nostalgic, but Underwhelms

Director: Rajkumar Hirani
Writers: Abhijat Joshi, Rajkumar Hirani, Kanika Dhillon
Cast: Shah Rukh Khan, Taapsee Pannu, Vikram Kochhar, Anil Grover, Boman Irani, Vicky Kaushal

Watching a Rajkumar Hirani movie in 2023 is like meeting a popular childhood professor. At first, the nostalgia kicks in. Adulting has been tough, so a blast from the past is welcome. This teacher is happy to see you. You’re still tickled by his quirks, his sense of humour, his illustrative style, his vintage ability to distil complex lessons into catchy one-liners. His personality is intact. But sometime during this meeting, you realise that it’s your memory of him that’s entertaining. You’re only seeing what you want — and hope — to see. He might be the same, but the world around him has changed. 

Dunki is that meeting. The issue isn’t immediately obvious. Instead, it’s steeped in a sort of slow-burning disappointment. The bridge between fond illusions and stark reality keeps getting wider. The title refers to “donkey route” — a risky illegal immigration technique used to cross borders and reach first world countries. The premise revolves around four Punjabi youngsters in the Nineties — Manu (Taapsee Pannu), Buggu (Vikram Kochhar), Balli (Anil Grover) and Hardy (Shah Rukh Khan) — desperate to reach London for a better life. Doing the Dunki becomes their last resort. 

How Comedy is Used in the Film

At first, the Hirani-isms feel reassuring. There’s a bit of PK (2014) in how two squabbling men are rendered helpless by the national anthem — they must stand still in a public space – while a third shamelessly steals their belongings. There’s the deadpan humour of the Munna Bhai franchise in how the shot of a lying man swearing on his grandmother transitions to her funeral. There’s some 3 Idiots (2009) in how the rustic backbenchers mug up a standardised English paragraph to pass a visa interview. And in the two timelines: A present-day journey breaks into a flashback of how they got there. The scene-stealing Vicky Kaushal becomes what Ali Fazal was to 3 Idiots and Jimmy Shergill was to Munna Bhai M.B.B.S (2003) — a tragic reminder of life in a playground of movie tropes. 

It doesn’t take long, however, for the lack of depth to emerge. It’s not the film that exists to serve the Dunki-driven commentary. It’s the commentary that exists to serve a formula-driven film. The route isn’t even mentioned until minutes before the interval. Most of the jokes — the kind that, in true Indian style, make light of serious situations — just don’t land. Buggu’s motivation, for example, is that his mother is forced to wear pants as a security guard. (Which isn’t a patch on the cheeky poverty-porn framing of Raju Rastogi’s family in 3 Idiots.) Manu trains to be a wrestler because a shady agent promises to smuggle her into England as part of the women’s Olympic team. Hardy gets drunk and curses a local for marrying his daughter off to an evil NRI, only to realise that he’s cursing at the wrong balcony. When Manu agrees to sham-marry a junkie for citizenship, the tradition of kissing the bride is turned into a cringey gag. A reverse-Dunki arc towards the end — one that involves fooling a Saudi officer — looks like a skit gone wrong. These little vignettes aren’t smart enough for Dunki to act meaningful. If anything, they trivialise the drama while trying to diffuse it.

Gratuitous SRK-ism

A bigger problem with Dunki is that it’s also a Shah Rukh Khan film. On paper, he plays the quintessential Hirani hero: An outsider who repairs his new setting as much as the setting repairs him. Because it’s Khan, this outsider isn’t a small-time Mumbai goon, an orphan genius or a Bhojpuri-speaking alien. He is Hardayal “Hardy” Singh Dhillon, a soldier who shows up to thank his rescuer only to end up falling in love, and feeling hard for the locals. The soldier has no real individualism or texture. He is a custom-fitted saviour-charmer-leader-chiller (a cinematic sibling of Orry, if you will), popular for being popular, and someone whose military background becomes an excuse for the film to be flexible. He could very well be the random ‘farishta’ (angel) from Kal Ho Naa Ho (2003). There is no before or after to his persona. 

The intrusive SRK hero usurps the humanitarian Hirani hero. Even though the film has multiple characters, a lot of it seems to be designed around Khan — and how to riff on his image. When Hardy spreads his arms for the first time, it’s that classic pose, except he’s using it to shield Manu from an angry manager. When he makes his entrance, it’s a Main Hoon Na (2004) moment: As an army-man carrying a bag at a railway station. The action sequences – an underwater stroll; a strangely staged shootout in the deserts of Iran (which spiritually reverses Bobby Deol’s Animal intro) – highlight Hardy’s hardiness. Even the Jeddah portion feels like a buy-one-get-one-free ode to Happy New Year (2014). An airport reunion does a Veer-Zaara (2004); Khan is playing his age here, but still seems to be ‘acting’ old, like a gingerly Veer Pratap Singh. Forget the Dunki, the film often looks like the story of a patriotic man who waits 25 years for his soulmate after choosing his nation over her. For better or worse, it’s hard to divorce the legacy of Khan from the films he does. Dunki is a casualty to that, unlike the recent Pathaan and Jawan. 

Hardy also cries a lot — like most Khan protagonists do — to emphasise the alt-masculinity that the actor has come to represent. But today’s Khan is not a convincing crier; the pursing of the lips and the quivering jaw are a far cry from the edgy Nineties’ scowl. As a result, almost none of the emotional parts work – not even the part where Hardy somehow engages a terse British judge with his monologue about a border-free planet. The judge listens only because it's Khan speaking. The writing isn’t great to begin with, but it’s hard to look past the superstar trapped in the character. Hirani, as a director, has a track record of camouflaging the pop-cultural face with a satirical facade. But Dunki is probably his weakest film, because there’s at once too much of Hirani, and not enough of him.

All of which is to say: That meeting with the childhood professor never usually pans out the way you anticipate it to. The nostalgia wears off. And the difficult truth, eventually, dawns upon you: He is now old, outdated, socially performative, a simplistic misfit in this modern world. Worse, he barely remembers you. He thinks you’re still the 11-year-old he lectured all those years ago. All you can do is leave with a brave smile on your face. Of course you can’t admit it, and it’s just too much to explain. So you drop a text in the school WhatsApp group named 8 Idiots: “Aal Izz Well. Sir gave me a soft jadoo ki jhappi”. Inverted smiley-face.