Double Tuckerr Movie Review: A Rollercoaster of Animation and Comedy, Riding Highs and Lows
Meera Mahadi‘s directorial debut ‘Double Tuckerr’, which is releasing this summer (June 11) is a film that aims to cater to the young movie audiences across India. Starring Dheeraj, Smriti Venkat, Kovai Sarala, MS Bhaskar, Kali Venkat, Muneeskanth, Mansoor Ali Khan, Shah Rao, Sunil Reddy and Karunakaran, ‘Double Tuckerr’ is an Artflix production and has music by Vidya Sagar.
The tragic opening plunge launches our hero Aravind (Dheeraj) on a roller-coaster when a motorcycle accident kills his parents and leaves him with facial deformities that impact his self-image darkly, ostracising him from the world, at least for the remainder of his childhood. Not that it matters much, because more calamities and humiliations come his way. He has a great deal to cry about, and often does so. If he survives to a better place, we want him to linger there for a while.
At the centre of the plot is the capricious clumsiness of two cartoonish angels from the god world – Left and Right – who pull the reluctant Aravind away from mortality before he’s ready to go. This sets in motion a series of chain reactions and disasters, involving the lives of various people.
Double Tuckerr’s oddball ideas and concept – basically an early version of the premise of Rajnikanth’s Athisaya Piravi – had a good deal of promise, but the comedy goes flat after the opening lascivious blitzkrieg. Left and Right both try (and sometimes successfully) to inject a friskiness into the mix, but far too often they just act as spoilers to a saner logic and sense of humour that are derailed to comic effect and, what’s more, become, well, all too affected. The Buddhis and the Amitabhs – the pop-cultural shout-out quotient, – is too constant to be funny.
However, there are many celebratory moments throughout the film, too – whenever the lefthand and righthand turn, respectively, into consecrated figures of cinema who will receive wild applause from their newly socially distanced audiences in the cinema. The 3D animation was provided by Symbiosis Technologies And this is just the cherry on top.
As it is, Double Tuckerr, even in its slobberry-free form, would be a fun movie to watch, its peppy score by Vidyasagar aside, even the voices brought alive by Kali Venkat and Muneeskanth, the two young speakers of Left and Right. But it also depends way too much on slapstick, and doesn’t peel the skin off its good premise.
In short, although Double Tuckerr will probably leave some of its very niche child-aged target audience beaming, in some manner it walks away from the theatre having failed to live up to a truly enjoyable cinematic experience. Then again, given all its shortcomings, there is – somewhere in there – something like fun embedded in its substance, so it’s perfectly viewable (if only you’re in the mood for some lightweight cinema).
