Dil Dosti Dilemma Review: Prime Video’s Latest Serial Is So Sweet It Can Cause Diabetes

The teenage years usually bring a raging volcano of confused emotions, new aspirations, dilemmas, self-doubt and much more. And that’s exactly what Prime Video’s latest original series Dil Dosti Dilemma is trying to achieve. The main character of the series is a young girl named Asmara (Anushka Sen); a typical teenager from a super-rich family whose entire existence revolves around the approval of her best friends.

She wears fashionable clothes, talks about fashion, loves to shop and have fun, and is embarrassed by any aspect of her reality that may not match the carefully crafted image of a stylish girl that she has created for herself. She is embarrassed by uncool gifts from her grandparents and seems unable to share her true emotions in front of her equally pretentious friends.

When her mother realizes that Asmara may have grown into an entitled, ungrateful adult who has lost all respect for her roots, she decides to cancel a two-month trip to Canada and instead send her to her grandmother’s house in a small town. as punishment.

Revathi Pillai’s character in the show is quite gullible and has a lot of self-esteem issues.

What follows is a predictable sequence of events in which the spoiled girl has trouble adjusting to small town life, but ends up loving it there. The show evokes stories we’ve all heard and seen many times before. Don’t be surprised if it reminds you of childhood moral stories, because it’s just as cheesy, if not more so. The random on-screen appearance of Shruti Seth, who plays Asmara’s mother in the show, whose acting chops still seem stuck in time, might remind you of the hit 90s show Shararat if you were an ardent fan like me .

Although the series attempts to superficially portray the complex emotions that teenagers experience, it barely captures a taste of reality. Everyone is too loving, understanding and hospitable – the series often ends with a sense of Suraj Barjatya’s version of growing up. This is a world in which nothing as dark as HBO’s Euphoria could exist. In this version of the toy world, a teenager can easily become the standard bearer of morality, and adults not only silently follow him, but also indulge in a frenzied glorification of personality. It feels like the series was written by a teenager obsessed with spreading goodness in the world.

Tanvi Azmi plays Anushka Sen’s grandmother in Dil Dosti Dilemma.

The show really tries to touch on teenage relationships when it shows a boy trying to manipulate Asmara’s best friend Naina into thinking he likes her, only to use her to get to her father, a famous tennis coach. Even though he feigns interest in her due to his ulterior motives and is an expert at gaslighting, the character is still treated in a saccharine manner.

The one thing that stood out about the series was the honesty with which it tried to show the feelings of self-doubt that are sown deep in the hearts of teenagers. It perfectly captures that golden middle of adolescence, where innocence and sinfulness coexist.

Anushka Sen’s character keeps lying to her friends that she was in Canada while on Tibbrey Road.

However, the show fails to show this kind of care towards other characters, blatantly portraying Hindi speakers as uncool and downright stupid. For example, Visakha Pandey’s character comes across as a loud idiot with zero common sense just because she is from a small town and blurts out the wrong English words. Similarly, Arjun Berry’s character is looked down upon just because he has a rich vocabulary in Hindi. He and his language are only mocked for the sake of a few jokes, none of which feel earned.

If you’re looking for something that treats its subject matter with the seriousness and attention it deserves, I’d recommend you skip this option. However, if you want something running in the background while you do urgent tasks or other chores, you might want to tune in to this simple series – or perhaps if you want a delirious take on a teenage utopia where ” happily ever after”. .