Satram Ramani’s first film was Helmet. Featuring an ensemble cast including Aparshakti Khurana, Abhishek Banerjee and others, it touched upon an important topic of using contraceptive, but failed to make any impact on the box office or on the minds of the audience. It was released last year. Being a new-age director, Satram picked up another interesting topic — body-shaming — and named his new film Double XL. The title, the trailer and the actors — Huma Qureshi and Sonakshi Sinha in the lead — looked very promising in the trailer but, though this film might do better than his last film, Double XL starts off well but loses track in the middle and then ends in typical Bolly style.
So, two women who are on the heavier side of the weighing scale meet by chance and then set off on a journey together to fulfill their dreams. While Rajshri Trivedi (Huma), a Meerut girl, wants to be a sports presenter in a leading channel, Saira Khanna (Sonakshi) is planning to launch her fashion label. They both meet by chance and head to London to pursue their goals. Why London? Well, Saira decides to shoot her video in London and Rajshri wants to catch Atul Chabra (played by Jimmy Shergill) the channel head who is also in the English capital. Tamil cinema star Mahat Raghavendra and Zaheer Iqbal join them and the entourage have a ball there shooting, partying, falling in love and owning themselves at the end.
The well-intentioned film starts well, establishing the characters and their aspirations in the first 30 minutes, bringing together two strangers with their shared discontentment, but it stretches a lot, losing focus in the second half. Also, the characters seem to be confused and not well-etched. For instance, Rajshri wants to be a sports presenter but forgets the glam factor required for the part. She is right when during the audition she points out that the waist size of a male presenter never becomes a vital requirement while a certain statistic is demanded of female presenters. Where is she wrong? She is wrong to wear a non-glam or less presentable attire for a part like that. And then later in the film when she interviews Kapil Dev, she is all glammed up. Sonakshi seemed confident right from the start, we believe her problem was her self-confidence.
What we loved? The natural bonhomie between the two leads. Talking about the other two actors, Mahat, a wildlife photographer who desires to make big feature films and fulfil the dreams of his late father, had our attention from the very first scene. His broken Hindi, calm and sweet demeanor definitely made an impression. But it’s hard to understand why was he rolling joints throughout the film and smoking them? Also, he did not look high at all. On the other hand, Zaheer is just the opposite. He is a go-getter, talkative (also talks non-sense) and flirts a lot and his over-the-top acting at times is annoying.
There a quite a few songs adding to the length of the film, but the one that resonates most with the theme is Kanishk Seth’s Ki jaana. Javed Ali’s romantic number, Tumse mila doon adds a soothing touch.
Nevertheless, the coming-of-age comedy drama is a good attempt in presenting a sensitive topic like body-shaming which needs the right attention and we should laud that attempt, if not the outcome.
Double Xl (U/A)
Director: Satram Ramani
Cast: Sonakshi Sinha, Huma Qureshi, Zaheer Iqbal, Mahat Raghavendra
Running time: 131 minutes
