Ulajh
strikes
you
as
an
attempt
at
statement-making
gone
horribly
wrong,
a
punchline
that
doesn’t
land,
a
roar
that
never
reaches
the
ear,
observes
Sreehari
Nair.
In
Sudhanshu
Saria’s
Ulajh,
Janhvi
Kapoor
plays
a
young
woman
who
has
to
fight
the
rabid
perception
that
she
has
landed
a
plum
career
assignment
only
because
of
her
illustrious
background.
She
is
Suhana
Bhatia.
She
hails
from
a
family
of
high-ranking
diplomats.
She
is
sent
off
as
India’s
deputy
high
commissioner
to
the
United
Kingdom
amid
jeers,
sneers
and
acid
titters.
It’s
pretty
evident
that
Janhvi
Kapoor
is
trying
to
tell
me
something
here.
Now,
I
am
no
committed
detractor
of
Kapoor’s.
If
anything,
I
see
her
as
something
of
an
odd
figure,
in
that
she’s
a
better
actress
than
what
her
haters
take
her
to
be,
but
not
quite
as
polished
as
her
super-enthusiastic
PR
machinery
would
have
you
believe.
Kapoor
may
have
given
her
best
performance
in
the
Zoya
Akhtar
section
of
Ghost
Stories,
where
you
felt
she
was
allowed
a
free
rein
to
bring
her
natural
physical
instincts
to
the
role.
Ulajh,
on
the
other
hand,
does
not
let
her
breathe.
In
the
course
of
the
movie,
Janhvi’s
character
realises
that
she’s
being
tailed,
used,
and
made
a
pawn
in
a
much
bigger
game
of
geopolitical
chess
—
in
short,
a
scapegoat
of
scapegoats.
She
contemplates
suicide
but
shrinks
away
from
the
ledge.
Abused,
and
her
voice
throttled,
she
fights
back.
She
brings
down
a
bunch
of
dangerous
mercenaries
and
politicos.
She
limps
her
way
to
the
victory
post.
She
sends
out
the
message
loud
and
clear:
she
may
be
wet
behind
the
ears,
but
when
it
comes
to
her
job,
she
will
duke
it
out
and
give
it
her
all.
As
a
wink
at
Janhvi
Kapoor’s
career
graph,
the
narrative
arc
is
just
about
interesting,
but
Ulajh
lacks
film
sense,
and
lacks
that
zhuzh
so
essential
to
putting
such
a
story
over.
What
it
needed
was
a
lead
actress
who,
when
pushed
to
the
wall,
could
have
brought
some
wit
to
her
part.
But
save
a
few
intimations
of
how
a
once-bucktoothed
girl
might
smile,
and
a
passing
moment
where
she
says
‘unofficial’
with
a
slight
slide
of
her
eyeballs,
Janhvi
Kapoor
is
utterly
flatfooted
here.
In
consequence,
Sudhanshu
Saria’s
film
strikes
you
as
an
attempt
at
statement-making
gone
horribly
wrong,
a
punchline
that
doesn’t
land,
a
roar
that
never
reaches
the
ear.
In
any
film
with
true
vision,
you
can
detect
an
open
approach
to
the
movie
frame:
we
keep
taking
things
in,
and
the
story
gets
told
in
the
process.
In
a
movie
like
Ulajh,
the
details
look
carefully
planted
(everything
from
a
child’s
birthday
cake
to
a
mole
on
someone’s
left
cheek),
so
you
never
have
to
strain
your
attention,
and
you
are
never
really
invested
in
the
goings-on.
There’s
no
real
momentum,
only
‘twists’
of
which
there’s
one
coming
in
every
seven
minutes.
A
movie
that
rests
on
the
strength
of
plot-based
highs
alone
is
in
essence
mugging
the
viewer
but
it’s
an
even
greater
embarrassment
when
Sudhanshu
Saria
and
his
writers
try
to
show
us
how
hard
they
have
worked
to
get
the
little
things
right.
The
ambassadors
and
foreign
service
officials
who
populate
Ulajh
look
like
cutouts
and
behave
like
a
fantasist’s
idea
of
how
diplomats
behave
at
cocktail
parties.
When
a
certain
diplomat
talks
in
a
foreign
tongue,
it
sticks
out
like
a
bad
hairstyle.
The
gossip
is
flat.
The
after-cocktail
lovemaking
becomes
a
matter
of
flashing
one’s
dimples
in
fast
cuts.
The
nighttime
scenes
are
so
bursting
with
plot
shifts
that
the
daytime
scenes
had
to
be
flaccid
(most
of
them
have
Janhvi
Kapoor
running
toward
the
camera
in
slow
motion).
The
geopolitical
setting
has
been
muddled
up
to
such
an
extent
that
I
started
missing
the
whole
‘Indians
are
good,
Pakistanis
are
bad’
line.
The
actors
are
in
on
the
mess,
and
that’s
hardly
good
news.
Meiyang
Chang,
who
plays
Suhana’s
professional
bête
noir
in
London,
has
the
look
of
a
confused
moose
that’s
also
pretending
to
be
angry.
Roshan
Mathew
hurls
into
the
dead
bureaucratic
air
everything
he
has
—
sniggers,
catchphrases
silent
threats,
random
splatterings
of
Malayalam
—
and
his
outpourings
land
with
the
passion
and
intensity
of
a
blown
kiss.
Rajesh
Tailang
and
Rajendra
Gupta
are
so
righteous
and
such
softies
that
you
cannot
help
but
wonder
if
there’s
something
the
matter
with
them.
Everybody
is
out
to
needlessly
thicken
the
gruel
(seen
this
way,
the
movie
lives
up
to
its
title),
and
even
the
honourable
prime
minister
tries
to
pull
a
grand
number
over
a
phone-call…
and
gets
away
with
it.
Adil
Hussain
plays
it
smart
and
refrains
from
wading
too
deep
into
the
muck,
and
this
feels
like
a
virtuoso
acting
performance.
All
things
considered,
perhaps
the
biggest
undoing
of
the
movie
is
that
it
wants
to
have
it
both
ways.
Tough-mindedness
and
melodrama
is
a
fatal
combination,
and
Ulajh
wishes
to
be
a
showcase
for
Suhana
Bhatia’s
(and
by
extension,
Janhvi
Kapoor’s)
cunning
and
resourcefulness
but
without
disturbing
the
morals
of
a
paragon
(some
impasto
of
dark
shade
on
the
character
would
have
made
this
tale
a
lot
more
bearable).
Sudhanshu
Saria
and
his
writers
want
to
get
us
squarely
on
Suhana’s
side,
while
presenting
her
as
a
damsel
in
a
dog-eat-dog
world.
She
may
be
sarcastic
and
biting
one
moment
but
she
has
to
lapse
into
charitable
largesse
and
thoughtfulness
the
very
next.
She’s
so
thoughtful
that
she
even
falls
for
Gulshan
Devaiah’s
‘It’s
not
easy
being
alone
in
a
new
city’
drivel.
On
the
subject
of
Devaiah,
he
is
cast
here
as
Suhana
Bhatia’s
nemesis-in-chief,
and
it’s
so
far-off
from
the
ambition
he
once
suggested
that
it
hurts.
There
was
a
time
when
Gulshan
Devaiah
was
going
neck
and
neck
with
Nawazuddin
Siddiqui
in
his
attempt
to
bring
to
us
the
poetry
that
defines
the
Indian
Weasel.
I
am
talking
about
a
phase
that
included
Shaitaan,
That
Girl
in
Yellow
Boots,
Peddlers
and
Hunterrr,
when
he
was
evoking
on
the
big
screen
patterns
of
thought
and
speech
that
are
indigenous
to
this
country
but
which
until
then
had
been
denied
its
artistic
worth.
Nawazuddin,
despite
his
spate
of
misfires,
is
still
at
it,
but
in
Devaiah,
one
senses
a
drop
in
vitality,
a
conscious
turn
toward
the
pat
and
the
tidy,
as
though
he
has
been
worked
over
by
some
life
coach.
The
direct
result
of
his
recent
softening
up
is
the
part
he
is
saddled
with
here,
a
part
that
feels
like
overcompensation
from
the
get-go.
He
may
be
playing
a
cold-blooded
chap,
but
to
have
Gulshan
Devaiah
portray
a
character
with
no
human
dimension
whatsoever
is
a
crime.
To
top
it
all,
he
appears
to
be
in
love
with
his
own
voice.
One
of
Devaiah’s
great
strengths
has
always
been
his
ability
to
conduct
his
on-screen
conversations
as
though
they
were
happening
on
the
wing.
Here,
he
talks
and
talks
as
if
to
himself,
and
drives
us
into
such
exhaustion
that
when
Janhvi
Kapoor
asks
him
to
shut
up,
she
does
us
all
a
big
favour.
Oddly
enough,
it’s
not
the
character’s
acts
of
villainy
but
the
self-involved
nature
of
the
performance
that
makes
you
hate
whoever
it
is
that
Devaiah
is
playing.
Just
for
the
record,
he
has
three
names
in
the
movie,
not
one
of
which
stays
with
you.
When
Gulshan
Devaiah
was
pursuing
the
Indian
Weasel,
he
was
pursuing
a
type
of
character
that
had
never
before
been
given
its
due
on
the
screen.
And
there
he
was,
making
it
vivid.
In
Ulajh,
he
comes
on
as
an
evil
windup
toy,
as
a
stock
villain,
and
it’s
a
blur.
Ulajh
Review
Rediff
Rating:
