Dil Dosti Etc is exactly the kind of film that could have been so much more, but alas, it isn’t. Inspired by the slacker films of Richard Linklater, Dil Dosti Etc is a character-driven drama set in a Delhi campus, and focuses primarily on two students – the poor-little-rich boy with existential dilemmas played by Imaad Shah, and the middle-class, firmly-rooted campus favourite played by Shreyas Talpade.
The film’s got very little in terms of story, but that’s not really a problem here, because it’s clearly not a plot-driven picture. Borrowing its spirit and its mood from Slacker, Suburbia and Dazed and Confused, some of Linklater’s most popular films which are prototypes for movies of this genre, Dil Dosti Etc is about young people and the direction they’re heading in.
The problem with the film however, is the amateurish direction by debutant Manish Tiwary who has an interesting idea, undeniably, but not the skills to execute it efficiently.
One can relate to Imaad’s wandering, questioning frame-of-mind, even his tendency to indulge in meaningless sexual relations while on a search to understand what love is. But how I wish the director would spare us Imaad’s pretentious voice-overs, struggling to figure out life, asking all those existential questions.
Much of my problem with Dil Dosti Etc lies in its sloppy writing. Most characters come off looking one-dimensional and half-baked because they haven’t been fleshed out well enough.
The film’s dialogue, sounding clunkier than King Kong climbing stairs, alternates conveniently between Hindi and English, but for no good reason. As if that wasn’t bad enough already, you also have put up with all that terrible acting.