Sunday
Rohit Shetty’s Sunday has all the elements from his previous two films, there is action (Zameen), there is comedy (Golmaal) and there is his regular, Ajay Devgan. In many ways, Sunday is also in keeping with the recently born genre of big-budgeted and thinly-plotted comedies, only with bonus material thrown in – there is Arshad Warsi, one of our best comic actors and there is Irrfan Khan for the ‘multiplex’ audience who take pride in appreciating and patronizing serious actors. This mathematics – a carnival of genre and A-list actors – ensures that the film will not bomb like the way Bombay to Bangkok did.
Sehar (Ayesha Takia) is a dubbing artist for animation films who keeps having these harmless little lapses of memory, forgetting her keys and way to the office. But events take a serious turn when she realizes she has no memory of an entire Sunday, a lapse that could implicate her in a murder. ACP Rajveer Randhawa (Ajay Devgan) helps her reconstruct the events and taxi driver Ballu (Arshad Warsi) with his struggling actor client Kumar (Irrfan khan) are important parts of that puzzle.
Although Sehar goes watery-eyed in the entire second half, the film which has its police officer hero eating ice-cream cones in every shot, collecting haftas at every street corner, is meant primarily to be a comedy. For comedy, a film would often depend on plot, dialogues, situations, and in some degree on performances. The main plot in Sunday, however, has trappings of a thriller and thus can be ruled out as the director’s mainstay for pulling out the comic rabbit. There is also no substantial comic sub-plot in this film; what the supporting characters inhabit are comic situations. Again, the situations themselves are not always on the funny side, if you consider scenes of inebriated girl alone on the Delhi roads (particularly so) at 4 am in the morning over and over again falling into the wrong hands, saved by decent souls that only exist in cinemas. All the same, a few situations are comic, like the one where a local MLA and a journalist are forced to be part of an identification parade.
The film’s saving grace, then, are a few comic dialogues and performances. The best dialogues are mouthed by Arshad Warsi and Irrfan Khan and are pulled off with aplomb. One actor who manages to be funny without having the punch lines is Mukesh Tiwary as ACP Randhawa’s assistant. Ajay Devgan, with his ‘assi, tussi aur lassi’ fails to impress. For the rest of the cast, neither their dialogue nor the performances work and often end up grating the nerves. The writing credits are shared by no less than five people and you wonder who to praise for writing the dozen or so comic dialogues, and, indeed, what were the rest doing? (The downside to the funny lines is that they have this ‘improvised’ quality about them rendered in a ‘stand-up’ comedy manner, where two people stand in front of the camera and fire their salvos. Unfortunately, the non-comic situations too are filmed with similar consistency – actors who were earlier moving around or working come to an abrupt stop, deliver the dialogues and only then carry on with their lives.)
Now, the film’s thriller aspect: although the main plot initially creates curiosity and suspense, Sunday does not unfold like a thriller – there’s too little coming too late. Even though the set up of events is done early on (murder of a girl), the rest of the plots are too slow to unfold. And add to this three songs and items, the only purpose of which is to get more recognizable faces seen in the film. Also, it turns out that it was after all not Sunday that they were trying to reconstruct but the previous Saturday night!
Rohit Shetty’s fascination with action sequences is only expected (he is the son of the legendary action director, Shetty). There are 3-4 action sequences with human bodies twisting, turning, somersaulting, agonizing in slow motion – it is clear the director doesn’t want you to miss any angle, never mind if they do not match with the treatment of the rest of the film. With red chilies and dry yellow leaves flying around the fighting hero, it may remind you of some similarly floating alphabets in another Bollywood film. Could it be the cinematographer (Aseem Bajaj) taking control, you wonder, your tongue finding your cheek?
While the songs in the film are undistinguished, the background music doesn’t let you have a moment of peace. Aseem Bajaj, together with the easy budget that the film seems to have, does give the film a bright and rich look. The editor, Steven Bernard, has made some stylish edits and does a satisfactory job.
Whatever it was that you were expecting to see here – comedy, action, suspense – the film leaves you dissatisfied. You already knew Arshad Warsi is good, so the only novel feeling you come out after the film is that Irrfan should try out more comedy. And Sunday might leave you with an ‘unexplained’ urge to grab an ice-cream and unwind some other way.
- Padmaja Thakore
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
sheesh SUNDAY Was one of the worst remake(if at all the director wanted to remake the movie using the same plot).
An very bad remake of the TELUGU movie “ANUKOKUNDA OKA ROJU”.though i don’t no Telugu my friend gave me a subtitled dvd of the movie.the movie is an excellent suspense thriller.
WOW what a movie(telugu version)…simply amazing…..excellent story,excellent screenplay,awesome acting…the movie is on par with ne hollywood thriller.
In sunday the thriller part wasnot visible only….the whole movie was full of crapy jokes which which didnot click…..acting in the movie was so so…nothing gr8.
the director still is in his GOLMAAL hangover.
I found the movie super boring.
Telugu original of SUNDAY is a classic in terms of filmmaking and concept also.
The USP of the film is the group of fanatic people who are disturbed by the protagonist while she is date drugged is so cleverly unvieled with lots of thrilling twists all along. This concept was totally taken out for the reasons best known to makers. without this concept, there was absolutely nothing in the story. and that is what makes sunday a very boring film. I was watching the film to see how the lead characters portrayed the original roles. to my utter disppaointment, director spoiled it by taking out the essence. Yet another remake done by someone without understanding the soul of the original…….
Naah, the mathematics doesn’t seem to have worked. If only there was mathematics to box ofice success…
I hope Rohit Shetty, a director whose first two films i liked, doesn’t get too carried by the golmaal hangover. The hangover of the earlier Golmaal destroyed the career of a genius like Hrishikesh Mukharjee, who sadly kept trying to recapture that magic in mediocre films like Rangbirangi, naram garam and Jhoothi.