When the trailer of Doctor G dropped, I asked myself, “Why are they making a film out of a non-issue?” For sure, Ayushmann Khurrana is Bollywood’s poster boy when it comes to bringing taboo subjects to theatres and subsequently to dinner tables. I am no woman, and I have no experience, expertise, or absolute evidence on whether a woman would be particularly bothered about her doctor’s gender. That said, I have seen several successful male obstetricians and gynecologists around me in both rural and urban areas, which made me wonder about the film’s very existence.
Anubhuti Kashyap’s debut film is a comedy-drama that kicks off by placing a male medical resident in the gynecology department, only to be soon flanked by a battalion of women.
Uday Gupta (Khurrana) is an MBBS graduate in Bhopal who lives with his mother (Sheeba Chaddha) and wants to specialize in orthopedics. Instead, the Bhopal Institute of Medical Sciences assigns him to gynecology. Doctor G spends much of its first two acts mining comedy from his discomfort, including a line that lands with unnecessary crudeness: “Why should I be a doctor of something I do not have?”
Much of this early humour feels manufactured and sits uneasily against the Hippocratic Oath and the realities of medical training. “Lose the male touch,” Dr. Nandini (Shefali Shah) tells a cranky and underprepared Uday, and from that point the film finds firmer ground.
After the early stretch, Doctor G starts dealing with actual people. There’s a friendship between two older characters that begins on Tinder and turns out better than you’d expect. On relationships in general, it takes the unromantic view that saying what you mean works better than sulking or settling. The drunk call to an ex, which Jab We Met once sold as endearing, is treated here as the small act of cowardice it usually is. A short kiss also doesn’t have to turn into anything more; the film just lets it stay what it was.
The mother-son relationship between Khurrana and Chaddha is handled with particular care. The writing is not especially novel, yet the performers’ chemistry and the screenplay’s sense of timing make the scenes land. A subplot involving Uday’s mentor, Dr. Ashok (Indraneil Sengupta), an orthopedist who figuratively lacks a spine, starts slowly but contributes to the protagonist’s growth. Uday, who earlier brushes off male infidelity, later risks his career to correct a wrong. This shift, filtered through Kashyap’s clear female gaze, gives the film its most interesting texture.
Doctor G retains the DNA of commercial Bollywood. Cinematic liberties are taken, and the interval block is one of them; it still works. The ongoing tension between Uday and Nandini is another thread Doctor G handles with reasonable flair. What does not work is the forced humor that occasionally arrives like recycled WhatsApp forwards. An innuendo-heavy counseling scene between Uday and a couple struggling to conceive is especially jarring.
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The characters emerge from believable milieus. Uday’s mother and the IAS-aspiring paying guest are particular standouts, and they are played by a strong ensemble. Khurrana’s vulnerable central performance is Doctor G’s primary asset, while Shah is excellent as the no-nonsense professor.
Rakul Preet Singh brings a bright, uncomplicated energy. Her character’s plain statement, “I want you in my life,” delivered without romantic interest in Uday, feels like a small but welcome correction to Bollywood habit. Sheeba Chaddha finds fresh notes in the quirky single-parent role she has played before. Puja Swarup’s Sunita is consistently funny.
The medical fraternity may object to certain broad strokes and to the way emotion occasionally overrides ethics. From a purely fictional standpoint, however, Doctor G succeeds. Kashyap uses a comic premise to thread together a range of social concerns, and the effort largely pays off.
The climactic dance number remains an unnecessary commercial intrusion, and a couple of threads (Kavya’s English essay, a potential farewell at the train station) are left unresolved. None of those loose ends sink the film. It remains easy to watch and still says something useful about how attitudes are shifting, especially outside the big cities.
VERDICT: ★★★½
Doctor G is now streaming on Netflix.
