Sonam Kapoor wears too many nose rings in this movie. It’s a small thing that probably bugged nobody else in the screening room, but by the third outfit change involving a different piece of clustered silver sitting aggressively on her left nostril, I found myself ignoring the dialogue just to watch the jewelry catch the studio lights. Dolly Ki Doli arrives with a premise that feels like it was pitched during a bumpy domestic flight and somehow survived the rewrite process without losing its sheer audacity. A con artist who marries unsuspecting men from various corners of North India and then skips town with the cash on the wedding night sounds like a great afternoon-matinee diversion on paper. First-time director Abhishek Dogra tries to keep the pace frantic enough that you don't notice the plot holes you could drive a Maruti Omni through, leaning heavily on that glossy, washed-out aesthetic that has defined urban Hindi films for over a decade. The opening act moves with a breezy, frictionless momentum that almost excuses the narrative laziness, establishing our titular bride as a phantom who disappears into the Delhi smog leaving behind stunned grooms and empty bank accounts.

As the con artist in question, Kapoor plays the role with an arm's-length coolness that works better for the character than it usually does for her filmography. She isn't trying to make you love Dolly or understand her childhood trauma because the script wisely refuses to give her any. Instead, she operates as a sleek, transactional machine who treats lehengas like tactical gear. When she flashes a practiced, tearful smile at a weeping mother-in-law during thevidaai, you see the gears turning behind the kohl-rimmed eyes, and it is genuinely fun to watch an actor embrace a character who is thoroughly, unapologetically selfish. Her performance lacks the manic energy of Rani Mukerji in Bunty Aur Babli, trading that specific street-smart charm for something a bit more polished and distant. She doesn't need to yell to command the frame, which is fortunate because a lot of the supporting men are doing enough yelling for everyone involved.

Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub shows up as one of the duped husbands, playing the kind of loud, insecure local boy he has mastered across a dozen other movies, yet he still manages to inject a bruised, pathetic sincerity into a scene where he's crying over a missing locker key. It's an interesting structural choice to spend so much time on the victims rather than the crime itself, though the film occasionally forgets it is a comedy and tries to manufacture actual emotional stakes for men who deserved to lose their savings for agreeing to an arranged marriage after knowing a woman for four days. Malaika Arora pops in for a special song appearance that feels contractually obligated and completely detached from whatever narrative momentum the director was attempting to rescue. The cinematography by Sameer Arya is bright to the point of being aggressive, washing every single interior in pastel pinks and blinding yellows that make even a modest middle-class drawing room look like a set for a luxury bathroom brand.

The soundtrack by Sachin-Jigar relies on the kind of thumping, bass-heavy arrangements designed exclusively for wedding dance floors, and while none of the tracks are particularly memorable once the credits roll, they do the job of keeping the energy from completely collapsing during the mid-film lull. Bollywood movies have a long history of celebrating lovable rogues who cheat the system, stretching all the way back to Raj Kapoor and Sunil Dutt, but this picture struggles to figure out what to do with a female protagonist who pulls off the exact same scam without a heart of gold hidden beneath her designer blouses. Whenever the script threatens to get genuinely subversive about gender roles and marriage economics, it panics and throws in a slapstick sequence involving incompetent police officers who run around in slow motion while traditional percussion blares on the soundtrack. The investigation is led by a perpetually exasperated cop played with broad, sweating strokes by Pulkit Samrat, though his character exists purely to provide exposition dumps between costume changes.

There's an underlying anxiety to the whole enterprise that reminds me of those mid-2000s romantic comedies where nobody involved trusts the audience to stay awake for more than ten minutes without a musical montage or a loud misunderstanding involving mistaken identity. The editing by Rameshwar S. Bhagat is frantic in places where it should breathe and weirdly stagnant during the punchlines, often holding on a reaction shot for half a beat too long until the joke deflates. Yet despite these mechanical missteps, the movie works better as a loose, episodic hangout picture than as a tightly wound caper. The various suitors—ranging from a wannabe cricketer with bad highlights to a soft-spoken NRI who looks terrified of Indian tap water—provide enough comedic variation that the central gimmick doesn't completely exhaust itself before the intermission. It is not trying to say anything profound about the institution of marriage or the desperation of small-town men chasing big-city dreams, and if I'm honest, that lack of ambition feels like a relief after sitting through so many bloated three-hour dramas that demand you take them seriously. By the time the final con is set into motion, the plot has become so preposterous that you just surrender to the neon colors and the endless parade of sherwanis, letting the nonsense wash over you until the screen goes black.