Junaid Khan and Sai Pallavi’s Ek Din has an intriguing premise that ultimately falters due to weak chemistry and an emotionally underwhelming payoff, discovers Sreeju Sudhakaran.
Key Points
- The film’s plot revolves around Dinesh (Junaid Khan), an overlooked IT employee, who gets one day to make his crush Meera (Sai Pallavi) fall in love with him.
- Despite a compelling premise and beautiful Japanese locales, the film suffers from Junaid’s overly restrained performance and a noticeable lack of chemistry between the lead actors.
Directed by Sunil Pandey and produced by Aamir Khan, Ek Din is a romantic drama that has Junaid Khan and Sai Pallavi in the lead roles. And like Aamir’s recent obsession with remakes, Ek Din is an adaption of the 2016 Thai film One Day.
If you haven’t seen the original, no problem, muchacho!
Imagine Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein or its Tamil original Minnale, but with amnesia, a hero who is less a bully and more a nerd, and, sadly, no Harris Jayaraj score to elevate that love-at-first-sight moment.
You get the gist, right?
What’s Ek Din About?
Junaid plays Dinesh, an IT support employee who, in his own words, possesses the power of ‘invisibility’. Which means he has this colourless personality that makes no one notice him at his workplace, and even when they do, they get his name wrong or call him ‘IT guy’.
He harbours a quiet crush on his colleague Meera (Sai Pallavi), only to discover that she is involved with their married boss Nakul (Kunal Kapoor).
Nakul is, very clearly, a dubious character. It is not just that he might be lying about the actual plight of his marriage to Meera, he certainly is. He is also bizarre enough to take his entire office on a trip to Hokkaido in Japan, instead of somewhere more plausible like Goa, seemingly just to spend time with her.
Dinesh remarks early on that grand hero entries exist only in films. Well, so does an Indian employer funding an extravagant foreign trip for an entire company. In real life, most of us would pledge lifelong obeisance if we get a box of kaju katli for Diwali.
Anyway, the story follows the same trajectory as the original, shifting the drama to Japan.
At the resort there, Dinesh makes a wish at a so-called lucky bell, hoping Meera would fall for him, even if only for a day.
Meera, meanwhile, finds out that Nakul was lying to her about his impending divorce when his blissfully unaware wife lands a surprise visit.
She extends her stay to deal with her heartbreak, and Dinesh manages to do the same, just to keep a tab on her. Just don’t ask how he could afford to do that on an IT support guy’s salary.
Then comes the twist.
Meera meets with an accident and develops Transient Global Amnesia. As any person would naturally do, I looked it up immediately on Wikipedia and yes, it is a real disorder.
In simple terms, it is a temporary loss of memory, somewhat reminiscent of Ghajini-style amnesia, where new memories cannot be retained and some past memories are lost, typically lasting around a day. Perhaps that is what drew Aamir Khan to this story.
Meera forgets the past two years of her life and is told that Dinesh is her boyfriend. This gives him the one day to make her fall in love with him, while knowing she will forget everything the next day.
A Good Looking Film
Now, I wouldn’t call Ek Din a bad film. At least, it looks really good on screen.
The picturesque Japanese setting adds considerable visual charm.
Having visited the country once myself, I can vouch for its beauty, though I have never experienced it in winter. Cinematographer Manoj Lobo captures the locales with an elegant sheen, making me crave for a revisit. Alas, I don’t work IT support for Nakul’s company.
There is a certain earnestness in how Sunil Pandey adapts the Thai film, even if it occasionally teeters on becoming a Japanese travelogue with a love story sprinkled in.
The film also does a good job in establishing Dinesh’s wallflower personality, and his early narration describing how his ‘invisible’ nature works with his co-workers is amusing. It also helps that the male lead’s more problematic, stalker-like traits from the original are toned down, making Dinesh a little more sympathetic.
The Love Story Doesn’t Hit The Bull’s Eye
If you haven’t seen the original, the premise is undeniably intriguing: An overlooked, socially awkward man gets a fleeting chance to be seen by the woman he loves and gives her a perfect day.
Junaid Khan certainly looks the part of the underconfident geek, but his performance is so understated that it begins to feel monotonous. He oscillates between two expressions: A sad, puppy-eyed gaze and the same gaze with a tentative grin. As a result, when he delivers emotional monologues, they fail to land with the intended weight.
Sai Pallavi, on the other hand, is effortlessly natural in her Hindi debut.
Given her filmography, she seems well-versed in playing characters grappling with memory loss (Premam, Padi Padi Leche Manasu, Athiran) and she brings grace and emotional clarity to Meera.
The film improves when it shifts to her perspective. The title track, in particular, works because it taps into her emotional state and the actress conveys those emotions adeptly in that sequence (Khwaab Dekhoon is another standout song despite that slightly annoying chorus).
Unfortunately, while the songs and the locales create the setting, the chemistry between the leads never quite clicks, which is crucial for a film like this. It is hard not to trace this imbalance back to one of the lead performances.
The final act abandons the layered emotional ambiguity of the original in favour of a more predictable, sentimental resolution. It may work for some viewers seeking a more conventional closure, but for me, a good romantic movie should linger in your memory far beyond ek din.
This one, sadly, doesn’t.
Ek Din Review Rediff Rating:
