Anupama Chopra reviews Udta Teer, directed by Akash A. Kaushik and starring Ayushmann Khurrana and Sara Ali Khan. The spy comedy follows a Pakistani agent who loses his memory and becomes fiercely loyal to India, the country he was trained to destroy. Anupama finds a promising premise caught awkwardly between spoof and sincerity, weighed down by shrill patriotism, sloppy backstories and an unconvincing romance.
There are flashes of fun in Ayushmann’s switches between Bilal and Vikrant, the late Mukul Dev’s turn as terrorist Azhar Maqsood and an action sequence that turns Rahul Bose’s hospital stretcher into a shield. But Anupama argues that the film’s insistence on conventional heroism and earnest nationalism undermines its comedy. Unlike Vibe and Happy Patel: Khatarnak Jasoos, it struggles to puncture the spy genre’s ideas of masculinity and heroism, leaving the serious passages feeling unearned and the jokes unable to sustain the film.
The THR Bottomline: A half-hearted misfire that lands awkwardly between spoof and sincerity.