Raat Gayi Baat Gayi is not everyone’s cup of tea – rather glass of wine. But then again it’s not targeted towards teetotalers of cinema. This one night stand is worth indulging for some wild-wacky-wicked fun.
Rahul (Rajat Kapoor) wakes up with heavy hangover after a late night party and is unable to remember just where he ended last night. All he remembers is that he started outrageously flirting with a stranger named Sophia (Neha Dhupia) with whom he lands in an isolated room in an inebriated state. Post that his memory is almost swiped off and he’s just inquisitive to know till what extent he went ahead.
The next morning Rahul’s wife Mitali (Iravati Harshe) is not on talking terms and leaves the house without explanation. With his neighbourhood friend Amit (Vinay Pathak), Rahul visits Saxena (Dalip Tahil) who had thrown the party to explore what happened the night before.
Opening post the party, the story keeps going back to the night through frequent flashbacks and individual perspectives of the party attendees. It however doesn’t follow a hyperlinked storytelling pattern but has a more straightforward approach. Interestingly everyone in the party is hitting on someone other than their spouse and these adulterous inclinations form the crux of the plot.
The writing by Saurabh Shukla and Rajat Kapoor comprises of casual conversations from everyday life with a very slice-of-life feel to it. The scene where a tarot card is being picked and predicted over the phone is hilarious. Rajat Kapoor seems to loosely derive characters and climax from his earlier films. Like Aamir Bashir’s Prasad is parallel to Milind Soman’s character from Bheja Fry , both being ex-flames of the protagonist’s (played by Kapoor himself) wife. Also the smart twist in the climax is faintly reminiscent of Rajat’s Mixed Doubles .
The pacing at times gets slow and some party scenes tend to get repetitive. Both, the length and the writing could have been crisper. Also the film appears protracted, primarily because it revolves largely around a single conflict of learning what happened that night. Rohit Shetty’s film Sunday , too, had a similar premise though it was designed more as a thriller. Neha Dhupia’s character seems half-baked with her familial and paternal (Sudhir Mishra) ties purposely kept peripheral to the plot.
Though not as exceptionally hilarious as Bheja Fry or as deeply poignant as Dasvidaniya , Raat Gayi Baat Gayi (from the Rajat Kapoor – Vinay Pathak camp) is entertaining in its own small-n-smart way.
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