Cast: Sachin Khedekar, Anupam Kher
A workaholic wakes up to find himself stuck in a time warp. What follows is a series of bizarre events, until he meets a mystery man who gives him life-changing lessons.
'It's just another manic Monday, I wish it was Sunday.' Yes, it sounds like an unfulfilled wish of every working professional in the world. Except one. Meet Aditya Pradhan (Sachin Khedekar), an egoistic, career obsessed man who indulges his family with mundane materialistic pleasures, but doesn't have a moment to spare for them. With permanently furrowed brows, weary eyes, and a perfectly dyed hair-piece, Aditya lives every day like it was Monday. Until one day he wakes up to find it's Sunday. And it's the dreaded Sunday the next day, and the next. What makes it worse is that no one ready to believe the oddity of his freaky situation. Harrowed and beaten by time, he desperately tries to end Sunday-everyday phenomenon, but alas, no luck. Enter Benaamkumar (Anupam Kher) - for the lack of a creative name - who enlightens him about simpler joys of life, giving and living. The seed of the idea is impressive. Outlandish too. Is it novel? No way! The core of the story is faintly borrowed from the Bill Murray Hollywood comedy, Groundhog Day.
Sachin Khedekar, the leading man of Chhodo Kal Ki Baatein isn't your routine 6-pack hunk. He's a common man with a paunch common enough to flaunt without a care, but that's not the 'weighty' problem here. The plot goes into such a painfully repetitive loop that he's haplessly stuck in there. He shows flashes of brilliance occasionally, though it's not the best we've seen from this powerhouse performer.
Anupam Kher, seems to be the other blindspot in the film. Normally, the one actor you can blindly trust sleepwalks through his role, as the wise-old-man, who has more insight than someone with eyes-wide-open. Talk of andha creative.
The supporting cast of Chhodo Kal Ki Baatein comprises of an ensemble of Marathi actors, and their theatrics are obvious; some over-the-top. All the characters keep reappearing and disappearing like ghosts of Sunday past, with their over-dramatic, theatrical performances.
Director Pramod Joshi, an established Marathi filmmaker, has an inspired idea here, fresh for Bollywood too, but he tries to drive home the philosophy so desperately that he ends up in circles. This dramedy has a couple of songs, an item number (Rum Mein Gham) and fine actors, but all this fails to amplify the seed of thought.
After a point, we get the big idea, but the movie continues to preach. And we're waiting to break away from this 'timeless' Sunday-go-round.
