Tag Archives: Yami Gautam Dhar

Movie Review: Dhoom Dhaam (2025)

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3.5 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Dhoom Dhaam on Netflix

Dhoom Dhaam knows exactly what it wants to be: a light romantic comedy with a touch of adventure that will make you laugh and not feel like you’ve wasted two hours. It delivers exactly that.

Yami Gautam Dhar and Pratik Gandhi star as Koyal and Veer. Their parents arranged their marriage, and they find one another attractive and accomplished enough to agree to the match. Koyal’s clingy family ensures that the couple never has a moment alone in the weeks before their wedding, but everyone seems happy with the arrangement.

Their first awkward moments alone in a hotel room on their wedding night are interrupted by a knock on the door. A pair of gun-toting tough guys barge in demanding to know where Charlie is. Neither Koyal nor Veer know anyone named Charlie, but the thugs assume they are lying.

A daring escape from their balcony reveals that Koyal is much more courageous than timid Veer. That’s further confirmed when they race away from the men in Veer’s car, and he’s more worried about getting a speeding ticket than the fact that their pursuers are shooting at them. Thankfully, Koyal is an experienced street racer.

That’s not to say that Veer is totally gutless. He’s a veterinarian, so blood doesn’t bother him. When their search for Charlie takes them to a male strip club, he does what he has to do and entertains the ravenous patrons with a cartwheel in his boxer shorts. Seeing a bunch of other women lusting after her new husband makes Koyal think that he might be a catch after all.

The action as the newlyweds race all over town is energetic, but not gruesome or too intense. This is definitely not an R-rated movie. Likewise, there isn’t a lot of heat between the couple, but their growing fondness for one another is quite sweet.

The couple’s physical awkwardness relates to the film’s theme: you can’t really know a person until you spend time with them, especially when there is such pressure to be perfect. Social media accounts and dating profiles are heavily curated. When Koyal and Veer meet for the first time, it’s in front of their whole families, with everyone on their best behavior. It’s easy to hide your true self and all your flaws under those circumstances, but it’s hard to do it forever.

What Dhoom Dhaam lacks in sparks, it makes up for in laughs. Gautam Dhar and Gandhi are both very funny and make good use of a solid script by Aditya Dhar, Aarsh Vora, and Rishab Seth, who also directed the movie. The writing team has a terrific handle on context and continuity, mining them for comedy while throwing in some delightfully absurd moments. Quality subtitles ensure that none of the humor is lost in translation.

Sequences are tightly edited, and without traditional choreographed numbers, the story moves at a fast clip. This is a movie intent on not overstaying its welcome, and Seth certainly achieves that. Dhoom Dhaam is really enjoyable.

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Movie Review: Chor Nikal Ke Bhaga (2023)

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2.5 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Chor Nikal Ke Bhaga on Netflix

Chor Nikal Ke Bhaga is Netflix India’s most broadly appealing Original movie to date. The high-concept heist film set aboard a passenger jet feels like a ’90s throwback, in a good way. It’s an entertaining thriller — so long as you don’t think about it too critically.

Yami Gautam stars as Neha, a flight attendant for a Middle Eastern airline who is swept off her feet by a charming passenger, Ankit (Sunny Kaushal). Their whirlwind romance hits turbulence when creditors come after Ankit to replace some stolen diamonds. His financial troubles become more urgent when Neha learns that she is pregnant.

Ankit’s plan is to steal some diamonds while they are transported from a fictional Middle Eastern country to India aboard a passenger flight, but he needs Neha’s help to pull of the heist. Neha’s own father was a thief, and while she vowed to keep her baby away from a life of crime, Ankit’s plan seems like the only way forward.

The plane that Neha, Ankit, and the diamonds are on is hijacked by extremists who demand that a dissident jailed in India be set free. This is a good setup for a story.

Some novelists who write without outlines talk about creating characters, putting them into situations, and letting the nature of the characters dictate how they get out of trouble. It doesn’t feel like that’s how Chor Nikal Ke Bhaga was written. The outcome was decided first, then the characters actions were reverse-engineered to achieve that outcome, with mixed results here.

If the only goal is to surprise the audience, that might be a reasonable way to construct a screenplay — but it requires detailed attention to continuity and character motivation. When the film is over, the audience should not ask, “Would the characters really have acted that way?” Unfortunately, that question lingers at the end of Chor Nikal Ke Bhaga.

That said, it is possible to watch Chor Nikal Ke Bhaga without getting hung up on details. Yami Gautam is quite good as a woman in a difficult position with high stakes for her and the people she loves. Sharad Kelkar is also solid as the intelligence officer brought in to investigate the hijacking. The first two-thirds of the film moves along at a good clip.

Things bog down during the investigation, as the truth is explained via flashbacks. The dialogue writing also gets annoying, especially when the passengers deplane and intelligence officers call out the names of the people they’d like to interrogate. Instead of just calling out a couple of times, they do so repeatedly. They yell, “Who is the flight marshal?” seven times, “Who is Bhanu Yadav?” nine times, and “Neha Grover?” a full eleven times.

Chor Nikal Ke Bhaga isn’t perfect, but it’s suitable Saturday night popcorn fare — and you don’t have to leave your house to watch it.

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Movie Review: Lost (2023)

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1.5 Stars (out of 4)

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Lost is a fitting title for Yami Gautam’s latest drama, because that’s how I felt when the movie was over.

Gautam plays Vidhi, an investigative journalist in Kolkata who stumbles onto a story when she meets Namita (Honey Jain) at a police station. Namita’s brother Ishan (Tushar Pandey) — a street performer who produces plays about Dalit rights — has been missing for two weeks. His disappearance came during a rough patch with his girlfriend Ankita (Piaa Bajpai), a news anchor who recently accepted a job and an apartment from politician Ranjan Varman (Rahul Khanna). But Ankita never reported Ishan missing.

Before Vidhi can dig in to the disappearance, a story is leaked that Ishan is involved with a Maoist group accused of terrorism. With Ankita refusing to answer her phone calls, Vidhi figures she might as well seek out the Maoist leader to confirm or deny Ishan’s involvement.

Lost is a very busy film. It speed-runs a plot that is dense with details but light on character motivation and devoid of atmosphere. Calling it a thriller is being extremely generous, since it lacks any tension whatsoever.

The only scenes that are allowed to breathe are between Vidhi and her grandfather Nanu (Pankaj Kapur), with whom she lives. She bounces ideas about the case off of him and he tries to pretend that he’s not worried about her safety, despite noticing two creeps taking photos of their house. The two actors have an easy rapport that helps regulate the story’s pace.

One way to improve Lost would have been to have Kapur play Vidhi’s father, and to eliminate her parents from the story entirely. Their absence could’ve freed up time for plot development elsewhere. Besides, Kapur is only thirty-four years older than Gautam, and the actors cast to play her parents are styled to look just as old as Kapur anyway.

There’s also an under-cooked subplot with Vidhi and her long-distance boyfriend Jeet (Neil Bhoopalam), who is coming to realize that relocating to be with a woman who’s addicted to her job might not be a great idea. The only good thing to come from his involvement in the story is an early scene in a restaurant where they discuss Ishan’s case. A song plays with on-the-nose lyrics like, “The road is dark and dangerous. You might get killed.” Vidhi hears this upbeat ditty and decides it’s time to dance. For a movie that lacks subtext, this feels appropriate.

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Movie Review: Dasvi (2022)

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3.5 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Dasvi on Netflix

Comedies made for an audience of all ages aren’t often considered prestige viewing, but they’re no less difficult to get right. Dasvi does just that, telling a story with broad appeal that never feels dumbed-down, thanks to solid performances and terrific story structure.

Abhishek Bachchan stars as Ganga Ram Chaudhary, Chief Minister (CM) of the state of Harit Pradesh. He’s used to getting his way, flaunting his power by transferring a local police officer he deems too strict and shutting down a proposal to build a school in favor of building a mall.

When he’s thrown into jail pending a bribery investigation, his life doesn’t change that much. Suck-up prison guard Satpal (Manu Rishi Chadha) gives Chaudhary special accommodations, and Chaudhary’s timid wife Bimla Devi (Nimrat Kaur) fills in as CM, taking direction from her husband over the phone.

All that changes when the prison gets a tough new warden, Jyoti Deshwal (Yami Gautam Dhar). Wouldn’t you know, she’s the same strict cop Chaudhary had transferred before he went to jail. She axes Chaudhary’s special privileges, including his daily calls to Bimla Devi, who’s left to govern on her own. Jyoti mocks Chaudhary’s eighth-grade education, calling him an “uncouth bumpkin.”

This hit to his pride — and his desire to avoid manual labor — inspires Chaudhary to take on the challenge of earning his high school diploma while behind bars. If he fails, he promises to drop out of politics.

Chaudhary is a fun comic hero because his flaws are obvious to the audience, but not to him. We know his dismissive attitude toward education needs to change, but why should it while he’s living the life he wants? When he finally gets on the right path, it’s a fun twist that his biggest obstacle is not the warden but his own wife, who’s come to enjoy the power that comes with being the CM.

A lot of the jokes in Dasvi stem from verbal faux pas committed by Chaudhary and Bimla Devi. Not all of the wordplay humor translates, but Laxminarayan Singh does a good job of nailing most of the jokes via the English subtitles (as when Bimla Devi insists that they build an “effigy” of her, when she means “statue”).

But Dasvi isn’t so much a laugh-out-loud comedy as it is one that lets the powerful make fools of themselves. The film doesn’t rely on tacky jokes or goofy sound effects, instead letting well-drawn characters highlight what’s funny about a perverse situation. This is all possible thanks to a carefully constructed screenplay by Suresh Nair and Ritesh Shah and some ace direction by Tushar Jalota, who helms his first feature film.

The cast does exactly what it needs to do to set the right tone, giving characters the right mix of silliness and sentiment. Abhishek Bachchan, Yami Gautam Dhar, and Nimrat Kaur carry most of the load, but supporting actors like Manu Rishi Chadha and Arun Kushwaha — who plays the math wiz bicycle thief Ghanti — complete the world-building.

Dasvi feels a lot like a Hollywood comedy in its structure, but it still makes room for a Bollywood-style dance number and a closing speech about the importance of education (for better or worse). It fits that such a widely accessible film would debut on Netflix, a platform always looking to reach a global audience. Making an all-ages film that families around the world can enjoy watching together is a worthy goal and no mean feat.

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