Covering Bollywood and the Hindi Cinema

HT reviews Sunday and gives it pitiful 2 and half stars. Some excerpts:

These two are made for each other in Rohit Shetty's La-la Land — he is addicted to ice-cream she dubs for kiddie cartoons. He is a cop and she is a damsel who has a Sunday missing from her week.

While she was sleeping-walking, there were a couple of murders, rape attempts, a fancy dress dance at a dargah, and when she wakes up, she is chased all over Delhi, by a gang of goondas led by a long-haired freak with a squeaky voice, while she zips around on a scooter.

Plot picked from Telugu hit Anukokunda Oka Roju, has Seher (Ayesha Takia) cutely pucker her brow because she is so forgetful! Ice-cream devouring cop Rajveer (Ajay Devgan) and his sidekick (Mukesh Tiwari) try to solve the mystery of her amnesia, while a cabbie (Arshan Warsi) and his sidekick (Irrfan Khan) keep popping up demanding Rs 420 from her.

As it happens so often in films with a strong supporting cast — Warsi and Khan just lift up the sagging film with its non-happening thrills and thanda romance. They have the funniest dialogue, a dance number and a fight sequence, which is more than can be said for the bored-looking hero.
Devgan must have seen the rushes and demanded some action, because he gets a long-winded chase sequence through the gully-mohallas of Chandni Chowk to catch a crook of no consequence. But it must have made him feel like James Bond or Jason Bourne — stars have their quirks.

Sunday is also a lesson on why not to put TV actors in key scenes, because they overact and try to grab footage that can't be edited out. Why take great pains to establish the heroine's unusual profession if it is not going to come into use anywhere? Why put in an item number (Esha Deol), when the film is about to end and audiences are looking at their watches?

Ajay Devgan, should get this straight — he is not 'cute' and using an ice-cream cone as a prop won't make him more likeable.

Ayesha Takia would be heroine material if she just took more care of her wardrobe and appearance. As for the rest… amnesia will strike the minute you leave the cinema. That's one missing Friday in the life of everybody who bought a ticket to this movie.