Ek Din

Ek Din Movie Review Rating:

Star Cast: Junaid Khan, Sai Pallavi, Kunal Kapoor, Pragati Mishra

Director: Sunil Pandey

What’s Good: Direction, script, the lead pair, the cinematography, the music…I could go on!

What’s Bad: Believe me, nothing!

Loo Break: Ille (Tamil for ‘No’)!

Watch or Not?: I would…again!

Language: Hindi

Available On: Theatrical release

Runtime: 125 Minutes

User Rating:

Meet the office IT department nerd, Dino (Junaid Khan), the guy who no one notices. Meet also his colleague, Meera Ranganathan (Sai Pallavi), from South India, who ‘speaks Hindi in Tamil,’ as Dino puts it. He is besotted with her, but she notices him only once, when he sets right her office laptop. Having fallen for office boss Nakul Bhasin (Kunal Kapoor), Meera is happy.

Nakul is on the verge of divorce as his life has been made miserable by his wife. He tells Meera that she is his sole anchor in the storm of his life, and he is set to annul the marriage.

With targets met and more, as an incentive, Nakul takes the entire team on a tour of Japan, a country that has always been on Meera’s bucket list, as her late father had introduced her to its highlights, food, and more. Meera is thrilled, especially as Nakul has admitted he chose the country only for her and that they will have an extra two days to themselves when the rest of the team returns home.

Dino, real name Dinesh Srivastava, is part of the group and has philosophically accepted that Meera is meant for Nakul. At a shrine in Japan, there is a Wishing Bell, and he wishes to spend just a day (Ek Din) of his life with Meera.

Uncannily, that wish is fulfilled when Meera realizes that Nakul’s unhappy domestic life story is fake and is heartbroken. She is injured in an accident while drunk and suffers from Transient Global Amnesia (TGA), a temporary episode of severe, sudden-onset memory loss, usually lasting up to 24 hours, where the person cannot form new memories and also forgets most of the immediate past.

Dino has stayed back too, because Meera did not return along with her team, and he gets his wish when he pretends to be her boyfriend in the hospital. And that day becomes the most beautiful one in his life, as well as in Meera’s. But what happens when she recovers her memory 24 hours later and has forgotten that day?

Ek Din Movie Review: Script Analysis

By now, we know that Sneha Desai (Laapataa Ladies, Maharaj, Loveyapa, among a long list of TV and stage writing) is no ordinary writer, and she takes the 2016 Thai film One Day and transforms it, with consummate yet extraordinary skill, into a magical Indian story. Co-writing with Spandan Mishra, they adapt it wonderfully to the Indian ethos and a logical conclusion.

Their realistic dialogues are a treat, and the film leaves the viewer so emotionally engrossed that we empathize with Dino and share his affection for the absolutely lovable Meera, a girl full of life, with, as Dino puts it, nothing but positivity in her and someone who makes people feel that life is all about sunshine and cheer.

Scripts always form the backbone of great movies, and this case is no different. The Thai film had won multiple awards back home, and this one deserves the same here!

Ek Din Movie Review: Star Performance

Junaid Khan is growing from role to role. Having watched him right from his 2024 play, Strictly Unconventional, by Faezal Jalili (who is also this film’s casting director), Maharaj and Loveyapa, it is clear that he is solidly improving with every acting vehicle. It is very tough shining in underplayed, seemingly simple characters like this one, and such actors are almost as underrated as those doing comedy.

Sai Pallavi is another powerhouse of talent. She is simply adorable as the no-nonsense yet pragmatic Meera, and her eyes express what long lines of dialogue cannot. Here is another whopper of an actor who proves that a skin show is not needed to deliver a wallop.

In smaller roles, Kunal Kapoor as Nakul, Pragati Mishra as Meera’s roommate, and Kavin Dave as Dino’s colleague also impress. The rest of the cast, including a few Japanese actors in walk-on roles, is fine.