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A textile supervisor turns wild after a horrible insult at the workplace that results in humour, punishments, shame, and revelations.
In Good Day, Prithiviraj Ramalingam plays a textile supervisor whose birthday spirals into chaos after a public insult.
Good Day U/A
3/5
Starring: Prithiviraj Ramalingam, Kaali Venkat, Bagavathi PerumalDirector: AravindhanMusic: Govind Vasantha
Good Day starts with a line from Tamil writer G. Nagarajan’s existential novel Naalai Matrum Oru Naalae, which is about a labourer and the things that pan out in his life on a single day. The novel gives an eagle-eye perspective of the non-person as he goes about his day getting some work done and indulging in vices. Good Day is also about one such person from the fringes of society.
Shanthakumar (Prithiviraj Ramalingam), a supervisor at a textile factory, begins his birthday with distress as his monthly salary is yet to hit his account. He asks his housemate to lend him a thousand rupees, but when the friend asks him to run an errand, Shanthakumar refuses. His ego is hurt. Hours later at his office, he gets slapped by his manager in front of a co-worker. We aren’t told why, but we understand that Shanthakumar is facing the fire for backing the co-worker, who was facing sexual harassment at the hands of the manager. The manager, being the son-in-law of the factory’s owner, leaves Shanthakumar to swallow his ego and endure the humiliation. And his salary is still yet to reach his account.
When he finally gets hold of his money, Shanthakumar flips. He sends most of the money to his mother and wife—sending some to the former lands him in trouble with the latter. He pays off all his commitments, and with the rest, he buys alcohol. Until then, Shanthakumar acts according to the whims of society. He heeds all its demands at the cost of his pride. Intoxicated, Shanthakumar tries to reclaim himself and rebel against the world, the economy, and the norms. Charity begins at home, and so does rebellion. Hence, the first victim of his wrath is the house owner who keeps fleecing money under the pretext of maintenance. He then calls his school crush, who is now married with kids. That doesn’t stop him from flirting with her. When the response seems positive, he takes a cake and knocks on her door. Shanthakumar becomes this relentless force who commits several such petty crimes in a matter of a few hours and becomes a public nuisance.
When he is about to kill himself by jumping off a bridge, he gets caught by the police, and the plot thickens. Amidst all the ruckus, there is a parallel story of a missing kid that’s hinted at. Shanthakumar has many epiphanies throughout his journey as he meets random strangers played by able actors like Vela Ramamoorthy, Bagavathi Perumal, Bose Venkat, Kaali Venkat, and many others. As a final act, the protagonist wants to save the missing child as penance, and for all the brilliant humour we are treated to, we are punished with some didactic lessons about the problems of alcohol.
While the structure, the wry humour, and the witty sarcasm work well for the film, it gets redundant after a point to see Shanthakumar slurring, drinking, and blabbering. The screenplay needed more refinement and plot points. As the protagonist moves from one place to another, the mechanics of the writing begin to show, which betray the contrivances. Also, the final act, though set up from the beginning, just feels like an easy way to tie it all up. If the aim is to create a story like Naalai Matrum Oru Naalae, we needed a protagonist whose problem is much more than alcohol. Good Day begins as an existential journey of an oppressed nobody. However, it quickly spirals down to become a film about an alcoholic. The stakes get demoted. So does the payoff.
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