‘The 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 Ranveer Singh starrer ’83.

However, The Zoya Factor is not about Kapil Dev. Going by the trailer it’s an out and out Sonam 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. Why not? Women have served that purpose in Indian cinema since time immemorial.

The Zoya Factor is 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 self-indulgent project to spotlight its leading lady’s cuteness quotient. But nothing goes over-the-top here. Not even when Sonam is 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.