Dream Girl (2019 film)

Dream Girl received mixed response from critics, who criticised the "empty" and "jumbled-up" writing as well as the "tasteless" and "stale" humour,[20] but praised the performances of the supporting cast. The film holds an approval rating of 50% based on 12 reviews on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of 5.6/10.[21]

Charu Thakur of India Today gave the film three stars out of five, noted that Dream Girl was an out-and-out comedy with witty one-liners and jokes, which made it a long comic skit sans a storyline. She concurred with Taran in praising performance of Khurrana and Kapoor. Criticising director for losing subject of the film she concluded, "However, his [Shaandilyaa's] hesitation to delve deeper into the subject makes it score less on the report card. If you are looking for a light-hearted comedy this weekend, [this film] should definitely be on your list."[22]

Shubhra Gupta of The Indian Express gave two stars out of five and felt the film was had many good ideas but those were not executed, stating, ".... these ideas remain half-baked, being mouthed strictly as meaningless dialogue for either laughs or claps". Praising Khurana for his performance, she concluded, "You stay watching Dream Girl for Khurrana. He plays Karam/Pooja with grace and conviction, and makes this thing sing."[23] Priyanka Sinha Jha of News18, praising Khurrana and ensemble of Manjot Singh, Vijay Raaz, Annu Kapoor, Abhishek Banerjee, Nushrat Bharucha, Rajesh Sharma, Nidhi Bisht and Raj Bhansali for their performances, rates the film with three and half stars out of five. Agreeing with Gupta, she noted that the second half did suffer from lack of ingenuity. Praising writer-director Raaj Shaandilyaa for 'keeping the screenplay pithy, the dialogues glib and story on the tracks, she opined, "Dream Girl will surely entertain the film going audiences while sparking off an important conversation on gender constructs in Indian cinema."[24] Writing for Film Companion, Baradwaj Rangan said "These are one-joke characters, and this is a one-joke movie. Very quickly, a sense of staleness sets in."[25]

Dream Girl has the opening day collection of ₹10.05 crore,[26] and second day collection of ₹16.42 crore, whereas the third day collection was ₹18.10 crore, taking its total opening weekend collection to ₹44.57 crore in India. On the fourth day the film crossed ₹50 crore and became Khurrana's fastest film to cross ₹50 crore until his next release, Bala.[27] The film has become the eleventh highest-grossing Bollywood film of 2019.[28]

As of 24 October 2019, with a gross of ₹169.36 crore in India and ₹31.44 crore overseas, the film has grossed ₹200.80 crore worldwide.[6]