Double role seems to be making a comeback. While 2012 saw films like Rowdy Rathore and Bol Bachchan with lead actors in double role, in 2013 there are a number of such line-ups too. While the remake of Seeta Aur Geeta with Katrina Kaif is much talked about, filmmaker Anees Bazmee’s comic caper No Entry Mein Entry is also set to give a triple bonanza, as it would have Salman Khan, Anil Kapoor and Fardeen Khan in double roles. Others who are set to portray double roles are Arjun Kapoor in Aurangzeb, Saif Ali Khan in the Judwaa sequel and Sanjay Dutt in the remake of Satte Pe Satta.
The formula has been a hit but filmmakers think that many go slow on the idea because most of the films with double roles don’t have enough substance to justify the double role.
“It has been a hit formula for many years. But now, when you think of introducing double roles, you can’t just talk about a kumbh ka mela or something of the sort, as it’s difficult to woo the younger audience with it. It should have something substantial,” says scriptwriter Sanjay Chauhan.
However, there are filmmakers who think that double roles never went out of picture. “The moment you thought that there’s going to be no other double role film, a Judwaa, Duplicate or a Chandni Chowk to China, Rowdy Rathore and Bol Bachchan popped up. While these films revel in masala and are perfect entertainers for the audience of out and out commercial films, the numbers reduced in recent times because the audience for realistic commercial cinema increased,” says filmmaker Piyush Jha, who thinks that the trend is not here to stay for very long.
“In the time to come, we would have more audience for realistic-commercial films than masala commercial films and justifying a double role in a realistic cinema is very difficult, unless it is something like Kaminey,” he adds.
Filmmaker Nila Madhab Panda says that though comic capers with double roles do good business here, he thinks there’s a lot that can be done to improvise the double-role movies. “To be honest, our films with double roles are senseless and over-dramatised. When showing the story of twins, we often show a larger-than-life picture, like the other twin suffering when one is being beaten etc. Where does that happen? We make caricatures out of the double roles,” he says, and talks about a Bulgarian film that was based on the life of male twins who turn into gay partners. “That was a very sensible film. We need to churn out something like that when opting for a double role,” he adds.