Ayushmann Khurrana is the fresh prince of the content-based cinema. The actor has delivered yet another knockout performance in the experimental comedy Dream Girl. The film is set in the bylanes of Delhi and Faridabad. It establishes right in the beginning that the lead character, Karam (Ayushmann Khurrana) lives in a tight-knit community where he is called Radha or Sita because of his portrayal of female characters in the local productions of Mahabharata or Ramayana.

Karamveer Singh (Ayushmann Khurrana) has this unique talent of talking in a girl's voice. He's talked into playing the role of Sita in the annual Ramleela since his childhood. Burdened under multiple loans, he's not financially stable. This quest for good jobs tumbles Karam into a call centre which uses girls to attract the guys on phone calls. The owner W Ji (Rajesh Sharma) persuades Karam to turn into Pooja and talk to his callers.

DREAM GIRL is the story of a man masquerading as a woman to earn his living. Karamvir aka Karm (Ayushmann Khurrana) is an unemployed youth in Mathura who is desperately looking for a job. His father Jagjeet (Annu Kapoor) runs a shop that sells funeral items and has taken a huge loan. The recovery agents have been harassing him over unpaid dues. Karm is known locally for playing female roles in plays and Jagjeet detests this side of Karm.

Ayushmann Khurrana is a jobless Delhi youngster. He wants a shortcut to success. He is blessed with a natural gift that earns him quick money. The social stigma of it, however, forces him to keep it a secret. He falls in love. Annu Kapoor is a significant part of his life. His personal life is soon at odds with his professional life. The secret eats away at his conscience, he wakes up to the inadvertent humanity of his job, and things become a hot mess before a progressive moral-of-the-story monologue ends the film.

Ayushmaan's character Karam turns Sita maiya and then Puja and everyone is smitten by her mesmerising voice which leads to a series of unusual, crazy situations. Set against the backdrop of Mathura, Dream Girl is a comedy of errors that stars a crackling ensemble consisting Vijay Raaz, Abhishek Bannerjee, Manjot Singh, Nidhi Bisht, Rajesh Sharma, Raj Bhansali among others.

Ayushmann Khurrana is back with his latest entertainer 'Dream Girl'. The quirky comedy film stars Nushrat Bharucha as the female lead; but the real attraction is the returning of Ayushmann-Annu Kapoor duo after 'Vicky Donor' (2012). With an interesting subject, the fun-filled milieu of India's heartland and an ensemble of good supporting actors, 'Dream Girl' could exactly one expects from Ayushmann Khurrana-brand of cinema. Except, it quite isn't. It is an extension of it.

Pooja is friendly, lovable, compassionate but moreover, she is fictitious and born out of a sheer need of employment of a well-educated, but jobless, Mathura resident Karam. Pooja has a fleet of admirers including women, who can do anything to marry her. Ayushmann Khurrana as Karam as well as Pooja is flawless with each and every expression portrayed.

Men falling for men masquerading as women is an old gag. Rishi Kapoor and Paintal's girly avatars in Rafoo Chakkar, a cheerful rehash of Hollywood's Some Like it Hot, attracts both male and female attention. Amrish Puri in Chachi 420 shaves off his prized moustache to woo son-in-law Kamal Haasan posing as his granddaughter's elderly nanny.

Dream Girl with Ayushmann Khurrana in and as Pooja, the dream girl of several suitors is certainly one helluva gender bender. Sure we have had all leading men, even the most macho of them all pull off some cross-dressing for laughs in Hindi films but Dream Girl is innovative in that it inadvertently, tables the idea of gender as a social construct.

Ayushmann Khurrana, poster boy of quality blockbusters in Bollywood, has made a habit of playing men leading dual lives. In Vicky Donor he was secretly a professional sperm donor. In Andhadhun he was a pianist indulging in elaborate fakery when his initial lie forces him to tell another, then another and another. Writer-director Raaj Shaandilyaa's Dream Girl has him playing a man pretending to be a woman on a phone sex line.

Karamvir aka Karm (Ayushmann Khurrana) has this unique ability to mimic a nubile woman's voice since childhood. The grown up unemployed Karm finds his rare quirky talent as a tool to save his unemployment woes and loan dues of his father Jagjeet (Annu Kapoor) who runs a shop that sells funeral items in Mathura - the land of Radha Krishna. Karm gets hired by WJi (Rajesh Sharma) who runs an underground Friendship club where women talk to men in a seductive tone.

One Word Review... Dream Girl: WINNER. Ayushmann Khurrana continues his dream run... Full-on entertainer with dollops of humour... Garnished with witty lines... Ayushmann, Annu Kapoor terrific... Raaj Shaandilyaa's direction hits the right chord.

Whoever said you don't need to take your brain with you while going to watch a comedy film, think again. Dream Girl is a far cry from run-of-the-mill comedies that try hard to tickle your funny bone but in vain. Directed by Raaj Shaandilyaa with actors Ayushmann Khurrana and Nushrat Bharucha in the lead, Dream Girl hits the bull's eye being the laugh riot it was touted to be. Without trying to enter the league of 'superhits' or 'blockbusters', Shaandilyaa has put all he could into his directorial debut.

Desperate to find employment, Karam picks up a job as 'Pooja' at a call center for sex chats, keeping most people in his life in the dark about the nature of his work. How long can he keep it up before everyone including his girlfriend and father find out?

Had Dream Girl been an Anurag Kashyap film, the dingy friendship call centre hidden away in the back of an electronics shop in a small town would have been lit up with neon lights. The women enticing men on phone calls would have been playful and seductive. The lonely men craving for attention and more would have been lusting behind women on the other side of the receiver. The narrative would have been complex and intense to the point of being enigmatic. But this is a Raaj Shaandilyaa film a clean, hilarious and unidimensional take on friendship call centres.