There is very little joy in watching a Bollywood spy comedy these days. You’re always on high alert. The suspense stems from the anticipation of exactly when the movie will break. The trust issues are immense. You know the drill: spoofy first half, serious second half. If it starts on an entertaining note, you sense there’s a catch. If it’s funny, you feel a bit guilty for laughing because you know the film will eventually reveal itself: intellectually, politically, patriotically. Humour disarms an audience more than violence and gore, so you know comedy is the prettiest trojan horse to soften the hall for mandatory India-shining messages. Being mean-spirited is a bonus.
Udta Teer obediently follows these beats. The one-liner is so simple that it’s ingenious: An undercover Pakistani spy (Ayushmann Khurrana) working as an Indian counter-terrorism agent gets amnesia in an accident and starts to believe that he’s actually Indian. Bilal, whose cover is Vikrant, thinks his cover is real. On paper (and in the trailer), it’s amusing enough. The setup is there for the taking. Maybe it was only a matter of time before those slapstick mistaken-identity and memory-loss gags were applied to national identity. They fly thick and fast in the first half. In fact, the movie is so loose-limbed here that you wonder if it’s taking the entire genre to the cleaners.
You convince yourself that perhaps it turns both Indian jingoism and Pakistan-bashing into twin punchlines. For instance, there’s an extended gag featuring a sporting Rahul Bose — as Vikrant’s intense boss — that belongs to the Housefull franchise; paralysis is a tasteless joke in 2026, but there’s something cheeky about this particular actor being so effective in the role. Given how the ‘villains’ are unwittingly the only fascinating figures in action thrillers and historical dramas, you’d think the over-the-top incompetence of the Pakistani characters in this film is a meta nod to this malaise. There are at least two more undercover ISI agents in India, and their exasperation of seeing Bilal forget his allegiances is milked to the last drop. Suhail Nayyar comes full circle as one of them, after standing out in the role of an undercover R&AW officer working in Pakistan in the series Saare Jahan Se Accha.
Sara Ali Khan plays Vikrant’s wife who has no problem rekindling their broken marriage after he loses his memory, which would be creepy if not for Khan’s ability to look like she’s acting in another movie altogether. In a story where every performance is supposed to contain a performance, the lack of it also feels like a performance. Ironically, the old Dharma Productions habit — those relentless callbacks to Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, DDLJ and its ilk — finally amounts to something in the one genre that has no connection to romance. The dead horse was flogged for so long that it has been shamed back to life.
Two recent movies come to mind when Udta Teer’s inevitable ‘turn’ comes. The first is the Kunal Kemmu-led spy comedy, Vibe, which switched to slick-action mode simply to showcase its craft as an all-in-one Bollywood entertainer; there was no ulterior motive as such. The second is Alpha, the YRF spy actioner that switched ideologies midway to become something it’s not to fit into the current landscape. This film is guilty of the same thing. You can tell that it reverse-engineers its intent, almost as an apology for daring to be irreverent about the holy cross-border conflict. You can also tell when Dhurandhar enters the (psychological) chatroom. Multiple personalities emerge, all at odds with each other. Everyone’s funny bone goes for a toss: the Pakistanis who were playing the fool abruptly become sinister, the Indians become heroic, the flag becomes the protagonist, and saffron floods the screen. At one point, four terrorists are captured to the score of a devotional anthem; at another point, a song called ‘Jai Hind’ is staged as a humiliation ritual for the enemies. Most scenes in the second half unfold like they’re written — and rewritten — by different writers who were given separate briefs. It’s the cinematic manifestation of James McAvoy’s character in Split.
This is when, as a viewer, you realise that the film becomes the very entity it appeared to parody. All the Muslim cartoon-baddies in the first half start to reflect the very demonisation you thought the film was spoofing. You remember the signs: a cheap Kashmir pun, an Imran Khan jibe. The insincerity is par for the course, but the mixed signals are grating. It reaches a stage where, forget the audience, even the movie doesn’t know if it’s being unserious or deadpan. The Khal Nayak theme that plays whenever Bilal surfaces out of Vikrant is no longer allowed to be a quip.
Udta Teer therefore enters an endless loop of defeating itself, flitting between an Incredible India spot and an inverted Dhurandhar template. Like its hero, it keeps infiltrating its own identity. The inception of plot-twists and personas is a sight to behold: the Pakistani pretends to be an Indian who pretends to be a Pakistani who pretends to be an Indian pretending to be a Pakistani who…it doesn’t matter. It’s hard to keep track. Even the backstory isn’t spared. None of this takes a toll on the poor spy who’s struggling to remember who he is; the memory defect could’ve been a metaphor for lost identities, but metaphors are so 2013. To paraphrase a Bojack Horseman line: when you watch a film through rose-tinted glasses, all the red flags just look like flags.
The man had to lose his memory to become a patriot, but it’s only patriotism if it’s for the ‘right’ side. Poking fun at the neighbour is a national sport, of course, but there’s nothing mainstream Hindi cinema can say that they don’t already say about themselves; self-deprecating humour is, after all, the hallmark of troubled countries. As a result, watching Udta Teer is like hanging out with the class clown whose problematic takes you tolerate because he’s witty — until he shows his true colours. It’s not that you didn’t see it coming. But it’s normal to feel a little duped by the end of films that promise humanist undertones. A decade ago, this might have been a playful send-up of a thriller like Raazi. But today it’s an agitated tribute to the low-hanging fruits of tricolour trees. Gone are the days of Tere Bin Laden, Happy Bhag Jayegi, or even Bangistan. Satire is no longer the sibling of dissent; it’s the stepchild of compliance.