Julie 2 movie review: Raai Laxmi's Bollywood debut is cringeworthy
Julie 2, starring Raai Laxmi, has been in the news for some time now and is in theatres today. Here is our Julie 2 movie review.
Julie 2 Director: Deepak Shivdasani
Julie 2 Cast: Raai Laxmi, Ravi Kishan, Rati Agnihotri, Aditya Srivastava, Pankaj Tripathi
Julie 2 rating: 4 Star Rating: Recommended (1/5)
In 2004, Neha Dhupia had famously said while promoting her film Julie that only sex and Shah Rukh Khan sell. 13 years later, the film's sequel, Julie 2, uses every trick in the book to compensate for the lack of Shah Rukh Khan in it.
"Yeh film industry hai. Yahaan talent nahi, yahaan sirf body chalta hai. Garma garam body," a sleazy producer says, licking his lips as he hungrily eyes the "garma garam body" of Raai Laxmi. With the Harvey Weinstein scandal blowing the lid off the casting couch in Hollywood, we know that this is not just a problem with the Indian film industries alone.
Julie 2 is about this "compromise" - the dark side of the world of glitz and glamour. But if you thought this film was a hard-hitting drama, a la Madhur Bhandarkar's Fashion, you are wrong. This is an erotic thriller, with a murder attempt which, despite willing suspension of disbelief, is completely implausible.
Raai Laxmi plays Julie, who goes from being a naive struggler to a superstar. But is there any real struggle? Julie gets thrown out of her house in the middle of the night, but has zero trouble finding someone else (in this case, Annie aunty, her make-up artiste) to put a roof over her head. She lands her first project with remarkable ease, after Annie aunty takes her along to meet a director, who declares without any audition that she is "a powerhouse of talent" and proceeds to sign her.
Julie's Bollywood career comes to a grinding halt after she manages to rub a financier the wrong way. She then goes down South, where she becomes a superstar after 'compromising'. Julie's journey forward is filled with cliches - an affair with a superstar who cares more about his public image than her, a liaison with someone from the underworld, a clandestine relationship with a cricketer who dumps her after she wants things to get serious because she is not "gharelu" enough to marry him. Of course, there are lots of sex romps and later, mascara running down Raai Laxmi's face.
But, as mentioned before, Julie 2 attempts to thrill. Julie gets shot during what appears to be a robbery gone wrong, but as ACP Devdutt (Aditya Srivastava) points out, "something big meets the eye". Within four hours, the ACP arrests the four masked men who committed the robbery. What tipped him off in their direction is anyone's guess. Aditya Srivastava is almost a caricature of the tough cop, as he mouths bizarre lines like, "Yeh dhai kilo ka nahi, dhai foot ka haath hai."
The loopholes are innumerable. To start with, if it was an attempt on Julie's life, how does she make it out of the jewellery store alive? At one point, she is in the direct line of fire of four machine guns firing away like there's no tomorrow. Masala: 1, Logic: 0.
Raai Laxmi may be making her debut in Bollywood with Julie 2, but she is hardly new to the arclights. Her performance is not half-bad, but the weak writing (blame writer and director Deepak Shivdasani) lets her down. At no point do we feel anything for her character, even when she sobs that everyone wants just her body but she wants love.
Even seasoned actors like Rati Agnihotri and Pankaj Tripathi are off their mark with their loud acting in Julie 2. Ravi Kishan is the silver lining; he looks effortless as the South superstar, Ravi Kumar.
Do yourselves a favour, give Julie 2 a miss