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.
(First appeared at http://passionforcinema.com/author/padmaja/)
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.
(First appeared at http://passionforcinema.com/author/padmaja/)
4 comments:
The story is set in Delhi, a place many directors find unmanageable for shoots. You only have to see the initial chase sequence on the streets of old Delhi, with huge crowds in the frame watching Ajay Devgan, to sympathize with the director. He must be so flabbergasted that he shoots rest of the car chases inside Pragati Maidan and makes his actors drive through public parks and restricted zones of Lutyen’s Delhi. Apart from these two ‘locations’ the rest of the outdoors are shot either at the Mughal monuments, or the India Habitat Centre (the latter runs the risk of becoming Delhi’s Filmistan Studio).
Dear Padmaja,
As always, you're piece has a good dose of humor while never losing an iota of insights and some very interesting ones at that.
I have realised that I switch off midway through films nowadays - it either holds me or it doesn't. Most, in the recent past, haven't. When I come back to read your take on it, I find many emotions echoed, but more importantly, I find angles that never occurred to me.
Thank you so much for writing religiously. It is such a pleasure to be your reader.
Dear Padmaja,
As always, you're piece has a good dose of humor while never losing an iota of insights and some very interesting ones at that.
I have realised that I switch off midway through films nowadays - it either holds me or it doesn't. Most, in the recent past, haven't. When I come back to read your take on it, I find many emotions echoed, but more importantly, I find angles that never occurred to me.
Thank you so much for writing religiously. It is such a pleasure to be your reader.
dear kartick
it is heartening to find readers with interest like yours. thank you,
padmaja
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