What the film makers actually wanted is like a Sidney Sheldon type of movie where the heroine has a backdoor story of rags to riches; instead the product is poorly baked erotica which is paid off as a drama that takes place in a heroine’s life. Raai Laxmi makes her Bollywood debut with Julie 2 which is also dubbed in Kollywood with the same name, maybe to bank on her popularity. Directed by Deepak Shivdasani, the film struggles to hold on to the script and gives up after trying to start as an emotional drama then for no reason goes as an erotic thriller.

Julie 2 is no brainer, a struggling wannabe actress lands herself big in the glitz and glamour of cinema, gets to experience the dark side of the movie making industry. But this story is somewhere between the half-baked screenplay that trots between Julie’s belief, murder and a confused director. The film opens with our heroine working on the sets of a biopic. The film is based on Late Sumitra Devi’s life; wife of a well-known politician Ashwini Asthana (Pankaj Tripathi). Before you wonder how she got there and what suspense awaits us, the actress gets in front of a huge gathering of media only to reveal the dark side of her life and the whole industry itself thereby inviting the wrath of other producers and actors who decide not to work with her. How she got into the chaos of cinema forms part of the story which comes as a flashback, the other part has some robbers who shoot her during a loot and we get to see an unconscious Julie in the background while her guardian relates the entire story of the rise of the actress.

Looks like Deepak wanted to make a film like Fashion in Bollywood or even like the dirty picture, hopefully that’s what he had on his mind, because in the end you have to rack your brains to ascertain the theme of the movie. Raai Laxmi has been in some of the good films here; Mangatha, Aranmanai and Kanchana. She has a penchant for glamour no doubts on that, but what we see in Julie is erotica in despair or even desperation. After being thrown out of her house, she becomes an actress by chance sooner than one could imagine. The new director who has not seen her act once is all praise for her acting, she starts her journey on a bitter note, finds out that the way uphill is not easy and just hard work would do no good, so she starts "compromising" which becomes the second most used word in the movie.

There is nothing really interesting in the film from the word go, in the efforts to show the struggle of a girl who started her wrecked journey from 13 where she started getting abused, the film goes on exaggerating with every single male that comes in Julie's life; director, cricketer, business man and who not; everyone wants a physical relationship with her. The desperation is too much dripping without reasoning. Raai Laxmi might have the talent, but in a film like this even the talented Pankaj who shone in award winning film Newton looks completely amiss and clueless.

Verdict: Julie is either an erotic movie, thriller or a drama; it's just a sad excuse for a bunch of people who call themselves movie makers to show cinema in bad light.