The trailer of Indrajit Lankesh's Hindi language film "Shakeela" doesn't hold much to impress.
From using modern-day Hindi music to cliched film sets, it feels like a repackaging of Vidya Balan's 'Dirty Picture' except that this version fails to bring the charm Vidya brought to the screen.
The film, as described by the filmmakers of 'Shakeela', is "inspired by life events of a famous star Shakeela who predominantly starred in southern cinema."
It features Richa Chadha as the titular adult actor who was one of the biggest stars of the 1990s arriving from Kerala who went on to act in several adult films in languages spanning Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada, while Pankaj Tripathi is the male lead.
The film is described to "portray the hardships of the actress as she had to face a lot of criticism, insults and betrayals from her own family members and the film fraternity who were influential in getting her films banned."
WATCH THE TRAILER HERE
Where it fails
The main reason for the success of 'Kinnarathumbikal', one of the films that catapulted her into the limelight, was solely her screen presence and energy, and with no other male lead in the movie.
Trying to fill in the gaping hole left by Silk Smitha in the low-budget softcore industry, Shakeela made her own mark with around 250 movies in her kitty -- heralding the 'Shakeela Tharangam' (The wave of Shakeela).
Meanwhile, the Shakeela that Indrajith is trying to portray doesn't look like she has much story to tell. The screen-space also seems to be overpowered by star cast Pankaj Thripathi.
Let's hope the full length movie holds more than what the trailer showed.
The film is produced by Sammy Nanwani and Sahil Nanwani, with music by Meet Bros and Veer Samarth.