Director: Sunil Pandey
Cast: Junaid Khan, Sai Pallavi
Rating: 1 star
Ek 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 (2004).
Besides desi scripts getting inevitably sourced from East Asia, one also learns how common memory loss is, as a central plot/movie idea, isn’t it?
We’ve hardly met as many people experiencing amnesia in real life, as we have, forever, with characters on the big screen.
That said, I seem to be suffering from a memory lapse myself. That’s 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, anyway.
Such is Ek Din. If I remember right, it opens with stock shots of Bollywood heroes — Ajay Devgn as Singham, Hrithik Roshan in War, etc — asserting that such heroes exist only in the movies. In real life, we’re more averagely human.
As in the lifeless lead of this film, who’s literally painted himself in the corner — speaking about feeling unseen/invisible, given that there’s nothing remotely remarkable about his personality to call attention to itself.
It’s an intriguing enough introduction. Think of him as the everyman Clark Kent. This non-dude Dinesh plays an IT clerk in a random Noida company.
The essence of Clark Kent is he transforms into Superman. Dull Dinesh goes through no character arc/journey. He remains the bland bloke he started out as — burdening the film itself with the same tedium, along with uninspiring moments, lines, music….
Junaid 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 non-fiction account. His last, Loveyapa (2025), was a romcom sweetly capturing GenZ zeitgeist.
Over here, he seems a performer forcibly pushed into the picture — looking lost, with a permanent semi-scowl, as if he’s sensed something smelling foul.
Maybe, that’s 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 in.
Sai Pallavi plays his female lead. We’ve been hearing about Sai, lately, for the fact that she plays Sita in Nitesh Tiwari’s upcoming Ramayana, touted as the most expensive Indian film, aimed at a global audience. Sai is an accomplished star-actor down South. This is the first film I’ve seen of hers. Surely, my bad.
But that does alert you to notice her talent. And I kept waiting for a moment that’ll explain her unusual casting in this pic as well — of an office colleague, who speaks “Hindi in Tamil”, while she might operate in English in such an environment otherwise.
The scene to steal does arrive. Which is when her character learns that the old married boss (Kunal Kapoor), she’s been having an affair with, is devoted to his wife, even expecting a child.
She conceals and reveals her mental state, subtly smiling in pain, in that moment; hanging between shock and composure, tears and surprise. Is that it? Yes.
This 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 what’s termed transient global amnesia.
She’ll forget everything about this day that she ends up spending with the dead-boring IT guy from work, since everybody else has left. She’s clearly not on any public social-media platform.
I haven’t watched the original One Day. Not that this remake makes for a hot recco. I’m told that’s also set in Hokkaido, Japan, as this.
You could deem it as a travel/road movie too. Only, there are better Insta Reels on Japan, in general, than this full-fledged Bollywood/Aamir Khan production.
It’s still a romantic film. The arithmetic of the genre is fairly simple. It hinges altogether on the alchemy between the main couple — for the audiences to root for them getting together, by the end of it.
The girl remains the boy’s ultimate workplace fantasy. Frankly, the boy himself appears perfectly decent-looking, who needs to simply work on his basic charm. The girl isn’t some Veronica/Pooja Bedi, from Archie/Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar, either — pretty much a Plain Jane herself.
It’s hard to tell what’s up here. What if the hero was someone on the spectrum, or with a mild disorder, but just as capable of pure love — say, Rain Man, As Good As It Gets, Forrest Gump… Would that work better? After some point, I stopped thinking.
For that day, the dull hero spends with the listless heroine, he reasons, “Ek din bhi kitna mushkil lag raha hai (even a day is seeming so tough, no?).” Couldn’t agree more, both of you.
