Laila (2025) Review

Very few movies featuring a male protagonist impersonating a female have failed. However, it seems that for Vishwak Sen, the entire, um, vishwa is conspiring against him in his latest film, where he spends most of the time in a female disguise. With Laila, he completes a hat-trick of duds - first Gangs of Godavari, then Mechanic Rocky, and now this. Vishwak tries his best - almost as desperately as John Donne's "Go And Catch A Falling Star" - but everything else is in shambles.

Sonu Model (Vishwak Sen) runs a beauty parlour in Hyderabad's Old City, possessing a Midas touch when it comes to beautifying women. His skills make him immensely popular among the local ladies. However, his beauty treatments land him in trouble with a womanizing cop (Prithviraj) and a dreaded gangster (Abhimanyu Singh), both of whom are out to destroy his parlour and eliminate him. To survive, Sonu must disguise himself as a woman, Laila, and protect the parlour until the storm passes.

Most reviewers writing about Laila might be feeling "don't get me started" deep inside. And yet, here I am, because bills don't pay themselves.

You know how Marvel and DC make fantasy and comic book movies? Half an hour into their films (Superman Returns, Iron Man, Ant-Man... and so on), you start feeling for the protagonist, rooting for him, because - despite the fantasy - there's something relatable about them. Laila, on the other hand, gives us Sonu - not a superhero, not a fantasy character, but a beauty and makeup expert - and yet, he feels plastic throughout. That, perhaps, is the film's biggest flaw: it's completely soulless, undesirably unreal.

Now, putting that aside, what else is wrong with the movie? The answer: everything! It leans heavily on slapstick comedy, which instead feels like a slap on your brain. It shamelessly throws in NSFW-level dialogues and Old Hyderabad-style double entendres (hence the 'A' certificate), but even that doesn't help. It tries desperately to be funny in every scene, but each attempt feels outdated and unfunny. Sticking oranges in a man's blouse doesn't make him look like a woman. And even if it did, the world wouldn't swoon over him the way this film vainly expects us to believe.

Worse, Laila is shockingly misogynistic. It peddles outdated beauty standards, equating attractiveness with fair skin. Ironically, the dusky girl that the characters ridicule as "ugly" is far more beautiful than her seven-layered, whitewashed version that they suddenly consider stunning. I wonder how that passed off. Laziness, maybe.

The human relationships in the movie are just as artificial. The romance between Sonu and Jenny (Akanksha Sharma) is not lovey-dovey. Sure, there's plenty of skin show by Sharma, but that's about it. The same is true for relationships between other characters.

Throughout the film, you'll find yourself wondering why a character behaves the way they do, what their motivations are - only to realize the filmmakers simply banked on the man-dressed-as-woman concept without actually fleshing anything out. And that's Laila in a nutshell: a half-baked, cringeworthy mess.

Vishwak Sen has tried his best. He does what's asked of him, but the character, which was supposed to be funny, ends up being mass-y instead. Sadly, it's just another poorly written role. Abhimanyu Singh and Babloo Prithviraj have lengthy roles, playing powerful losers, but they fail to generate genuine laughs. Prithviraj, at best, manages to land a few chuckles in a couple of scenes. Vineet Kumar, as a die-hard fan of Megastar Chiranjeevi, is unbearably loud. The endless Chiranjeevi references he keeps throwing around stop being funny after a while.

Among all the actors, Adnan Sajid Khan stands out - he looks the part and delivers a solid performance. His character is actually well-written. But don't ask who he is - you won't find his name in the movie's IMDB or Wikipedia listing. He's not on the posters, either. Khan, known for playing Gullu Dada in many Dakhni films starting from The Angrez, deserved better recognition.

The songs are nothing but fillers, awkwardly shoved in - much like those one-reel adult films that used to be spliced into shady rural cinemas. And the music is just plain bad.

The action sequences are decent, but that's about it.

No Majnu would fall for this Laila, and neither should you.