Ek Din movie review: Aisa dull din?

Director Sunil PandeyCast Junaid Khan Sai PallaviRating 1 starEk Din is a love story that involves memory loss based on a Thai production titled One Day 2016 As was the last Hindi romantic hit Saiyaara 2025 about a rare form of amnesia with its premise derived from a Korean film A Moment to Remember 2004Besides desi scripts getting inevitably sourced from East Asia one also learns how common memory loss is as a central plotmovie idea isnrsquot itWersquove hardly met as many people experiencing amnesia in real life as we have forever with characters on the big screenThat said I seem to be suffering from a memory lapse myself Thatrsquos what happens when a film is so forgettable that you can barely recall what you sat through while your famished brain was wandering towards the exit door every now and then anywaySuch is Ek Din If I remember right it opens with stock shots of Bollywood heroes mdash Ajay Devgn as Singham Hrithik Roshan in War etc mdash asserting that such heroes exist only in the movies In real life wersquore more averagely humanAs in the lifeless lead of this film whorsquos literally painted himself in the corner mdash speaking about feeling unseeninvisible given that therersquos nothing remotely remarkable about his personality to call attention to itselfItrsquos an intriguing enough introduction Think of him as the everyman Clark Kent This nondude Dinesh plays an IT clerk in a random Noida companyThe essence of Clark Kent is he transforms into Superman Dull Dinesh goes through no character arcjourney He remains the bland bloke he started out as mdash burdening the film itself with the same tedium along with uninspiring moments lines musichellipJunaid Khan plays this protagonist This is his third feature His debut Maharaj 2024 had such an excellent true story that you could enjoy it furthermore as a nonfiction account His last Loveyapa 2025 was a romcom sweetly capturing GenZ zeitgeistOver here he seems a performer forcibly pushed into the picture mdash looking lost with a permanent semiscowl as if hersquos sensed something smelling foulMaybe thatrsquos just how the character is But what good is such supposed onscreen sincerity if you make the audiences feel equally disinterested rather than drawing them inSai Pallavi plays his female lead Wersquove been hearing about Sai lately for the fact that she plays Sita in Nitesh Tiwarirsquos upcoming Ramayana touted as the most expensive Indian film aimed at a global audience Sai is an accomplished staractor down South This is the first film Irsquove seen of hers Surely my badBut that does alert you to notice her talent And I kept waiting for a moment thatrsquoll explain her unusual casting in this pic as well mdash of an office colleague who speaks ldquoHindi in Tamilrdquo while she might operate in English in such an environment otherwiseThe scene to steal does arrive Which is when her character learns that the old married boss Kunal Kapoor shersquos been having an affair with is devoted to his wife even expecting a childShe conceals and reveals her mental state subtly smiling in pain in that moment hanging between shock and composure tears and surprise Is that it YesThis happens when the firm that both the young leads work in are on an offsite trip to Japan The girl gets into an emotional trauma soon after losing her memory for a day Or whatrsquos termed transient global amnesiaShersquoll forget everything about this day that she ends up spending with the deadboring IT guy from work since everybody else has left Shersquos clearly not on any public socialmedia platformI havenrsquot watched the original One Day Not that this remake makes for a hot recco Irsquom told thatrsquos also set in Hokkaido Japan as thisYou could deem it as a travelroad movie too Only there are better Insta Reels on Japan in general than this fullfledged BollywoodAamir Khan productionItrsquos still a romantic film The arithmetic of the genre is fairly simple It hinges altogether on the alchemy between the main couple mdash for the audiences to root for them getting together by the end of itThe girl remains the boyrsquos ultimate workplace fantasy Frankly the boy himself appears perfectly decentlooking who needs to simply work on his basic charm The girl isnrsquot some VeronicaPooja Bedi from ArchieJo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar either mdash pretty much a Plain Jane herselfItrsquos hard to tell whatrsquos up here What if the hero was someone on the spectrum or with a mild disorder but just as capable of pure love mdash say Rain Man As Good As It Gets Forrest Gumphellip Would that work better After some point I stopped thinkingFor that day the dull hero spends with the listless heroine he reasons ldquoEk din bhi kitna mushkil lag raha hai even a day is seeming so tough nordquo Couldnrsquot agree more both of you