Ayushmann Khurrana’s Udta Teer loses its way trying to balance border comedy with flag-waving melodrama.
Quick Vibes
Genre: Spy-Spoof
Vibes: Zany
Film Credits
Cast: Ayushmann Khurrana, Sara Ali Khan, Suhail Nayyar, Mukul Dev, Rahul Bose, Ram Kapoor, Gulshan Grover, Smita Tambe, Supriya Pilgaonkar, Brijendra Kala
Director: Aakash Kaushik
Writers: Aakash Kaushik, Dia Walia
Story
Udta Teer kicks off in Pakistan, where terrorist Azhar Maqsood (Mukul Dev) is still fuming over Operation Sindoor and plotting some bloody revenge against India. The Indian intelligence soon discovers that he has slipped across the border with plans to unleash havoc in India. Clearly, destroying a country is not enough to keep a man occupied because Maqsood is also very active on Hinder. Between planning deadly attacks, the terrorist has time to swipe for love. National security can wait. Our man has matches to check.
Unfortunately, Vikrant is hardly the cleanest man in the room. His real identity and loyalties are about as genuine as a designer watch bought off the pavement, with everything tied to a murky cross border conspiracy involving Indian and Pakistani intelligence. Just when his double life looks ready to explode in his face, a freak accident wipes Vikrant’s memory clean.
The highly trained officer carrying explosive secrets suddenly has no clue who he is, what he was doing or whose side he was on. Should he catch the terrorist? Help the terrorist? Save India? Betray India? Go home to Yamini? First remember who Yamini is? Nobody knows. Least of all Vikrant.
What begins as a high stakes spy mission quickly turns into a comedy of errors, with the most important man in the conspiracy also being the only one who has absolutely no idea what is going on.
What’s Yay
The callbacks to some iconic scenes from Dharma’s old hits like Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham
What’s Nay
Udta Teer never quite decides whether it wants you to burst out laughing at the absurdity or wipe away a tear for the motherland.
Writing And Direction
Udta Teer starts off with an opening scene that’s so unhinged. You have a terrorist plotting national destruction and somehow finding time to swipe for love on dating apps. That start immediately announces a film ready to embrace complete madness. Except this Ayushmann Khurrana starrer cannot quite decide how mad it actually wants to be.
For a major chunk leading towards the climax, one minute you are laughing at the sheer ridiculousness of it all. The next, the song placement seems to be asking you to stand up and salute. That identity crisis becomes the biggest problem with Aakash Kaushik’s direction.
Kaushik and co-writer Dia Walia seem to be making two films that somehow ended up sharing the same screenplay. One wants to be a gleefully ridiculous cross border spoof taking potshots at spies, and intelligence blunders. The other desperately wants to become a flag-waving patriotic film. Neither side is necessarily a bad idea. Putting them together, however, often feels like serving biryani with chocolate sauce.
Where Kaushik and Walia absolutely strike gold is with the pop culture satire. They pepper the narrative with downright hilarious callbacks to classic Dharma blockbusters like Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham. It is s ridiculously entertaining to watch a cross-border espionage plot suddenly behave as though it has wandered onto the set of a grand Bollywood family drama.
Aakash Kaushik and Dia Walia undeniably have some terrific spoof material. Whenever Udta Teer embraces its own insanity, it can be a riot. But the larger story keeps slipping out of Kaushik’s hands. For a movie that spends so much time creating glorious confusion, everything eventually falls into place just a little too conveniently.
Performances
Ayushmann Khurrana holds Udta Teer together even when the plot seems determined to fly off in different directions. He effortlessly juggles two completely different versions of Vikrant. One minute, he is the brooding counter terrorism officer conducting dangerous operations with the seriousness of a man carrying the nation’s security on his shoulders. The next, he is an utterly lost amnesiac. The actor keeps the film from collapsing under the weight of its own craziness.
Sara Ali Khan, unfortunately, gets nowhere near that kind of playground. As Yamini, she is handed a criminally thin wife role that mostly requires her to stand around while chaos happens elsewhere. Instead of receiving a meaningful arc or a strong dramatic conflict of her own, her character functions largely as a sounding board for Vikrant’s increasingly bizarre existence. She gets to look confused. Then concerned. Then exasperated. Occasionally, she gets the luxury of combining all three.
Suhail Nayyar gets some of the film’s funniest material simply by reacting to the human disaster unfolding in front of him. As a deep cover operative, all he wants to do is complete his mission. That reasonable ambition becomes increasingly impossible when his amnesia stricken partner keeps behaving like a spy whose allegiance settings have been accidentally switched to random. Nayyar begins as the straight man surrounded by madness and gradually becomes a beautifully frustrated mess himself.
Rahul Bose makes the absurdity of the surrounding situations even funnier. Late Mukul Dev turns in a deliciously campy performance as the terror mastermind Azhar Maqsood. Instead of playing a generic, brooding villain, he treats the character like a walking cartoon. The rest of the supporting cast also steps up and delivers effective performances that keep the comedic wheel spinning smoothly.
Tech Check
Arpit Bharde’s cinematography hilariously mimics a high-budget action thriller. At the same time, it also cheekily pivots to soft-focus visual setups. Shivkumar V Panicker’s editing happily joins the madness.
Music
Udta Teer struggles to find the right tune. For a banner so closely associated with songs that often enjoy a longer shelf life than the films themselves, the soundtrack feels strangely forgettable. The biggest disappointment is the lack of ambition in the compositions. The tracks sound recycled, the arrangements feel generic and that unmistakable musical soul one expects from a Dharma album seems to be missing.
The Final Shot
Udta Teer flies highest when logic takes a holiday and the spoof takes charge. Unfortunately, the film keeps forgetting whether it wants laughs or patriotic goosebumps. Amnesia, it seems, is contagious.
