Ulajh is an espionage thriller centred around an IFS diplomat posted in London.

The movie starts with a long shot of the mountains in Kathmandu quickly descending on Janhvi Kapoor’s butt as she runs up the mountainous stairs.

And that’s where the camera focuses for the first one hour of the movie.

I mean, imagine this…..they get an ensemble cast which will make you drool with anticipation, throw in an international espionage angle and then spend half of the movie focussing on tight shirts and pant suits, and we are in 2024, not 1990s 🤦🏻

Everytime Janhvi even tries to burst through her acting limitations trying to give her best, the cameraman is busy trying to make you look at her trying to burst through her clothes.

I would really like to know who the cameraman of this movie was, or was it the Director who chose the camera angles?

Coz this is probably the cheapest camera angles which I have witnessed in recent times, when movie making has distinctly moved away from titillation (unless the scene demands it).

Then somewhere past the midway mark, the Director Sudhanshu Saria suddenly remembers that he has actually paid other actors to be in the movie too.

So he tries to focus on them, but “cameraman hai ki maanta nahi” ting ting ting ting ting ting.

So we have Gulshan Devaiah trying his best to get some screen time, and he has done a fabulous job in whatever little time he has.

And we have Roshan Mathew trying to validate himself, but unfortunately relegated to being a snarling “Mallu Angry Ganeshan”….come on we know he can do way better.

And we have Adil Hussain …..yes THE Adil Hussain given around 10 minutes of screen space despite the fabulous actor that he is.

Actually even the support cast is terrific.

Jitendra Joshi, Rajesh Tailang and Rajendra Gupta are such amazing actors and they are all wasted.

The cameraman hasn’t even bothered to focus on them in some scenes…..you know where his attention was, right???

The plot of the movie is pretty run of the mill. Very very little intelligence was used while writing it or maybe they simply copied it from any of the numerous Hollywood spy thrillers.

As far as Janhvi is concerned, I would go out on a limb and say that this was probably the best and the worst choice she could have made for a movie.

The best because she was the lead character, had almost 75% of the screen time to herself, was playing a character she had never attempted before, had a fantastic chance to display her acting skills….

The worst because……the Director chose to angle his camera at everything else but…….

Someone really needs to tell this team that we are in 2024 and Ranjeet and Sudhir no longer oggle at women in tight clothes.

#DaMoRating: 2/10

Disclaimer: The only reason I am giving this movie 2 points is because of the support cast. I enjoy watching Gulshan, Roshan, Jitendra, Adil on screen and they always live up to expectations……without them I would have given a ZERO (maybe a minus thanks to “you know who”)