Honey, he ruined my Sunday

Sunday
Cast: Ajay Devgan, Ayesha Takia, Arshad Warsi, Irrfan Khan
Direction: Rohit Shetty
Rating: *

If watching 1980s movies in which there is a damsel in distress, a hero who single-handedly beats up numerous thugs and where cars fly into the air for no particular reason, is your thing, make a beeline for Rohit Shetty’s Sunday. If not, save yourself some grief and don’t ruin your weekend.

One of the hallmarks of a good story spinner is one who can keep multiple tracks going, colliding ever so lightly, enough to keep the viewers interest piqued but not making connections too obvious. In a suspense story where it is always necessary to strew red herrings, this becomes almost mandatory. 

Sunday attempts to be a suspense film and so when Sehar (Ayesha Takia), a dubbing artiste, wakes up one Monday morning thinking it is Sunday, she gradually realises she has lost one day.

So far so good. But when a cab driver Ballu (Arshad Warsi) keeps asking her for Rs 420 for a ride she doesn’t remember taking and an aspiring actor Kumar (Irrfan Khan) keeps calling her a ghost, it becomes obvious that she encountered them during her missing time.

To make it even more heavy handed she is constantly being fired at or held at knife point by a group of long haired maniacs. She, of course, is the damsel in distress.

Her hero appears as the bribe taking cop Rajveer (Ajay Devgan) who bashes up the thugs, chases a drug dealer across the terraces of Delhi’s Chandni Chowk, and discards all the herrings to solve the mystery of the missing day as well as two murders that have happened that night. On the way to finding the link, there is a car chase and several sundry vehicles are blown up.  

But then Sunday also purports to be a comedy and so the screen is filled with all actors upto all kinds of buffoonery when they are not in suspense mode.

And so Kumar runs around as Dracula sometimes, as Raavan with 10 heads  and Ballu makes fools of the foreign tourists who hire his fire engine red ambassador cab.

Someone or the other is perennially slapping someone else in the name of comedy. 
Shetty’s last film Golmaal was a huge hit, which probably accounts for the profusion of talented actors like Ajay Devgan, Arshad Warsi and Irrfan Khan showing up in Sunday even though their roles are anything but worthy of their presence.

In fact the whole film stinks of a let’s-make-hay-while-the-sun-shines attitude, never the right reason to do anything creative.
indumirani@gmail.com