The film was promoted with full page adverts in all leading newspapers of the country a few months back and everyone was amusingly surprised to see the name of Pahlaz Nihalani as the producer, who had just left the chair of Censor Board chief amongst loads of controversies and fingers raised on his style of working with the scissors.
Hence, looked upon as one of the biggest ironies of the present times, JULIE 2 was widely considered as another ‘B-grade’ erotica made under the guidance of ex-censor chief, knowing all the hidden tricks related to the specific genre. However the film amazingly not even satisfies that one obvious genre and turns out to be a big mess experimenting with more than one genre without any vision as such becoming a biopic, an emotional drama, a political crime thriller and even a spiritual film promoting Lord Jesus, all together at the same time.
Though the last line written above would clearly give you the idea of the film’s absurd and funny narration without any slightest of doubt. Yet I would like to support the film in one aspect and that is the choice of its lead actress, which was nowhere wrong or undeserved in any sense, whatsoever.
Having worked in the South film industry for years, Raai Laxmi makes her debut in Hindi films with JULIE 2 asking for a deserving attention. But sadly neither her director nor the writers provide her any worthy support to prove herself on the screen. The girl has got the looks and a great screen presence too as required for the role of an Indian film heroine. But the makers of JULIE 2 fail to present her in any appreciable style, not even in the ‘expected’ sensual scenes wasting a given opportunity.
So this is a rare case, wherein a worthy candidate ready to reveal herself on screen unfortunately gets presented in a pretty confused and visionless manner in a bad or rather pathetic film. Strangely titled as ‘Deepak Shivdasani presents JULIE 2’ (for tackling the copyright issue), it seems the director wasn’t sure what he really wished to make as a film throughout his shooting schedule. And that’s pretty clear when the skin-show actually begins post the intermission and the film has nothing of that sort in its entire first half. Probably many would feel like cheated while watching its initial hour progressing as some kind of biopic-thriller instead of the loudly promised erotica.
Putting it honestly, JULIE 2 keeps giving you the impression of the routine masala films made in the 80s with everything jaded like a hidden chip in a locket with a cross and more. Even the music and choreography exactly looks like what we used to see in those films made in that particular era.
In short, JULIE 2 has nothing what it promises in its provocative posters or trailers and it’s a pity that we get to see many gifted actors being wasted in such poor films too like Rati Agnihotri, Pankaj Tripathi and even Ravi Kishan.
Rating : 1 / 5
(Note : This article also got featured in UC-News mobile app in Nov. 2017)
