Zoya Factor Looks Like A Sonam Vehicle

Okay,first things  first. The Zoya Factor has nothing to do with Zoya Akhtar . Heck, it doesn’t have anything to do with Sonam K Ahuja, nee Kapoor who leads a charmed life. The  girl Zoya she plays  in The Zoya  Factor leads a strange  freaked-out  life where her birth coincides with  the  victory of Kapil Dev and the Indian cricket team at the  Cricket World Club in 1983.

Here I must pause to  observe  that  Kapil Paaji is suddenly a hot favourite in  Bollywood. He features prominently in  this film and  he’s also the centrifugal  force in the forthcoming  RanveerSingh starrer ’83.

However  The Zoya Factor is not  about Kapil Dev. Going by the trailer  it’s an out and outSonam  K Ahuja vehicle, more so than her last starrer where she  had three  other lovely ladies to share the limelight. Here it  is  just she, and  the Malyalam  superstar  Dulquer Salman reduced  to eyecandy  in the way Fawad Khan was  in the Sonam starrer  Khubsoorat.

These feminist  Bollywood heroines, I tell you!

The men  in Sonam starrers(Neerja, Veere Di wedding, Aisha) are almost invariably  used as decorative  props.And why not? Women have served  that  purpose  in Indian cinema since  time immemorial.

The Zoya Factor is  a  good-looking  film. The  locations are eye-pleasing and  the humour is not excessively wacky. Sonam relies on her Alice-in-wonderland persona, as she is considered  ‘lucky’  by the Indian cricket team. 

The  not so lucky Sanjay Kapoor , Sonam’s real-life Chachu ,plays  her  father, as  the role was perhaps too brief to afford  Anil Kapoor. There are some  interesting incidental actors who come and go in the trailer  ensuring that  the proceeds remain perky and pretty.

The  Zoya factor looks like an innocuous ,somewhat  selfindulgent  project to spotlight its  leading lady’s  cuteness quotient. But nothing goes  over-the-top  here. Not even when Sonam is a imagined as  a fullblown Godess showering her largesse on the cricket team

 Has cricket ever failed  cinema? Yes and no. For every Lagaan  there is  an Aawwal Number, All Rounder and  Victory. We shall soon know which way Zoya’s destiny is  headed.