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Sai Pallavi truly deserved a better Bollywood debut. The writing is so bland that Meera becomes one of her weakest performances. Ek Din confuses simplicity for shallowness.
Ek Din starring Sai Pallavi and Junaid Khan are running in cinemas now.
Ek DinU/A
2/5
Starring: Sai Pallavi, Junaid Khan and Kunal KapoorDirector: Sunil PandeyMusic: Ram Sampath
Ek Din Movie Review: Gentle, simple, heartwarming love stories are always welcome, especially in this climate where one can’t ignore Hindi cinema’s obsessive affinity towards aggressive, gory, testosterone-pumped actioners. But simplicity shouldn’t be mistaken for shallowness or a lack of substance.
Sai Pallavi and Junaid Khan’s latest outing, Ek Din, unfortunately, is that. The film needs you to suspend disbelief but that’s hardly the problem. Its weakest link is its linearity, which renders the narrative a looming layer of monotony. The makers are so intent on keeping things breezy and neat that they never quite engage with the emotional mess of the characters.
As a result, you too try very hard and eventually fail to see the complications that could’ve given the film some bit of depth. Ek Din revolves around the lives of colleagues, Dinesh Kumar Srivastav and Meera Ranganathan. But let’s go to the very beginning – the opening sequence. To highlight how unassuming and regular our male protagonist is, we get to see a filmy montage.
This montage seems less of a prelude to what’s in store. It doesn’t establish his character in anyway. Instead, it feels like an ode to Bollywood’s action films. There’s a slow-motion sequence of Ajay Devgn sliding out of his cop van in Singham, Hrithik Roshan’s stylish gait in War, Shah Rukh Khan framed against billowing wind and swirling leaves in Main Hoon Na and Tiger Shroff’s signature backflip.
After this is done, Ek Din begins. Both Dinesh and Meera work at Mycon, a software company in Noida. Dinesh’s team leader calls him a ‘gold standard gadha’ and in his own words, he’s invisible to everyone, particularly to Meera, who he’s infatuated with. The first time that Meera notices Dinesh is when her laptop malfunctions and she needs an IT guy to help her out.
Interestingly, they bond over Snow-Miku, a Japanese doll he finds at her desk, and out-of-league dreams. Meera, on the other hand, is seeing her boss, Nakul Bhasin, who’s about to divorce his wife or so he says. One day, Nakul announces that the entire team will be flying to Hokkaido in Japan – Meera’s dream destination – for the company off-site.
They decide to extend their stay by two more days until Nakul’s wife gives them a surprise visit. Meera realises that the couple is very much together. Heartbroken, she drowns herself in alcohol at a pub and gets caught in a snowstorm, leading her to suffer from hypothermic shock. She wakes up to learn that she now has TGP (transient global amnesia) because of which she loses her memory for a day.
The universe grants Dinesh his wish of having Meera as his girlfriend for that day (he had earlier prayed for it before a fortune bell). Meera believes him until she realises the truth. The rest of it is predictable. And yet the makers – director Sunil Pandey and writers Sneha Desai and Spandan Desai – keep beating around the bush till the final denouement, so much so that even a 2-hour-5-minute runtime feels like eternity.
Thanks to its second trailer that gave away everything, you’re ultimately left with nothing else to explore. No, there’s no surprise, no memorable melody and no chemistry that can make you cling on to the narrative. Don’t get us wrong… the film has its heart in the right place. And it’s refreshingly quiet but this quietude starts bothering you eventually.
Ultimately, it doesn’t even become an extended brochure of Japanese tourism. And as you journey through this tale, you’ll also end up questioning a few missing links… For instance, why would Meera, a Tamil girl, call her mother in Chennai from Hokkaido and speak to her in Hindi? And why is there almost always an Indian doctor – a Gujarati one this time with a heavy accent – treating Indian patients in a foreign land?
What’s also not established is what makes Meera so unattainable to Dinesh. Was it because he was an introvert? Was it because their personalities as people clashed? We don’t know. The makers resort to tropes so jaded and outdated that the characters of Dinesh and Meera look like vanilla and marshmallows with no real arc.
Dinesh is our regular IT guy, who leads a rather boring life. He neatly fits into the familiar nerd-with-glasses mould. These characters veer dangerously close to Mary Sue-Gary Stu territory, so scrubbed of flaws, contradictions and spark that they merely feel like caricature-ish characters rather than fully realised people. And this is the reason why actors Sai and Junaid fail to leave a mark.
An artist of the calibre of Sai truly deserved a better Bollywood debut. The writing is so bland that Meera becomes one of her weakest performances till date. At some point, Dinesh describes Meera as ‘Apple ke tarah exclusive aur Android ke tarah har jagah sync hone waali.’ But you realise that these are just words with no evidence to prove what makes her a cut above the rest.
Junaid, on the other hand, looks consistently perplexed. Yes, this is a part that required restrain but his performance feels uncertain as though he himself hadn’t quite settled on how to approach it. In a scene, while trying to imply how out-of-league is Meera for him, he says, ‘Gareeb ka bachcha jis tarah khilone ke dukaan ko dekhta hai…’ But even then, he seems to be searching for the role.
Kunal Kapoor as Nakul is also wasted as he gets related to the periphery after becoming the catalyst for the anti-climax. So, is there anything good about it, you ask? Well, yes, provided you manage to remain glued to your seat towards the end of the second half. There are some moments shared by Meera and Dinesh that are poignant and warm.
There’s a scene where he tries to awkwardly propose to her in a supermarket back in Noida. In that moment, Junaid shines. In another scene, Meera opens up to Dinesh, trying to tell him how she has fallen in love with him in a day’s time. Once heartbreak hits Meera, you get reminded what makes Sai an ace performer, who can bring a spark even to the sweet-nothing moments.
But apart from these sporadic troughs, this film feels like a wasted effort and, more importantly, a disservice to Sai, failing to tap into her range and intensity. In a nutshell, keep Ek Din for kisi aur din.
