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Al-Ahram Weekly 27 Jan. - 2 Feb. 2000 Issue No. 466 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 27 Jan. - 2 Feb. 2000 Issue No. 466
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Frantic for laughs
By Khairiya El-Bishlawi
Adel Imam -- the superstar who monopolised the comedy throne for 25 years, and who once employed Mohamed Heneidi in a minor role as a taxi driver -- seems, ironically, to be following in the younger man's footsteps. After the massive success of Heneidi's film set in the American University, the young actor went off to Amsterdam for the follow-up. But while Heneidi tore a shirt emblazoned with the American flag from an unpleasant character in his former film, Imam, in the third of the Bekhit and Adila films, turns up in New York wearing a bandanna imprinted with the same.
That a number of scenes in this film appear to verge on the offensive given the manner in which they patronise expatriate Egyptians may be an inappropriate complaint -- the film, after all, purports to do nothing more than make its audience laugh, and comedy that is crude is not necessarily less funny. But when Adila asks Bekhit whether they are close to the Egyptian Embassy, and Bekhit replies "of course we are, can't you smell the moloukhiya?", I like to think I was not the only member of the audience who raised an eyebrow. And sure enough, later, we do find an Egyptian diplomat, scoffing a bowl of moloukhiya when he is supposed to be working.
Written by Lenin El-Ramli, directed by Nader Galal, Hello America, like similar superstar vehicles, is designed simply to showcase its star. Adel Imam is intended to be the sole focus of the audience's attention, filling a great deal of the screen in a great many scenes, most of which rely on hackneyed comic formulae.
It is almost inevitable, given the objectives of such a film that it should turn, essentially, into a series of comic sketches that are barely contained within a coherent framework. Like mismatched beads strung together in a single necklace, low one after the other, flying in the face of any consistent characterisation, plot development, or thematic unity.
The film opens with Bekhit (Adel Imam) smoking hashish in a water pipe and announcing to his friends that he intends to travel to America. One of them reminds him of imperialism, the mafia and white eggs, but he refuses to be disuaded. And so we follow him to America, where scriptwriter and director contrive occasions for him to crack jokes and involve himself in slapstick in a manner that resembles the short cartoon more than anything else.
Sudanese actress Sattouna, employed in a humourous fashion by the Sudanese director Said Hamed in Saidi fil Game'a Al-Amrikiya, is here rather abused by director Nader Galal, who turns her into a sexually insatiable, ugly woman who leaps over Bekhit, breaking the bed and then fighting with Adila, played by Sherine, in tasteless scenes that have no dramatic justification.
The overplaying of cliché and stereotype robs many scenes of anything beyond banality. The pedantic ridicule of homosexual relationships reaches extremes when Bekhit is surrounded in a prison cell by a circle of supposedly naked men who seek to molest him. It prompts the usual one liner, which appears to have already caught on with audiences.
The film also criticises American family life. Bekhit adopts a very moralistic attitude towards Madonna, daughter of the expatriate Egyptian Nofal, played by Osama Abbas, who is encouraged by her mother to lose her virginity. It is an oddly misplaced piece of censoriousness given that the two protagonists of the film are unmarried yet lead a very active sexual life. Bekhit, too, makes advances to the American president's daughter. And guess what? She ends up falling in love with him. He also manages to swindle $50 million from the Americans only to be chased by expatriate Egyptians seeking to rob him of the sum.
One of the rare instances where scriptwriter and director are successful is in the scene where American security men, in germ-proof suits, inspect Bekhit's jar of mesh (salty white cheese), thinking it is a biological weapon, since being an Arab he is necessarily a potential terrorist. Another funny scene has Bekhit and Adila, starving, removing the label from a can of dog food before devouring it, as if by changing the can's appearance they can change its contents.
Can one come down too heavily on a film such as this which, after all, is designed only to provoke laughter as easily, and as unchallengingly, as possible?
Yet Hello America, in spite of everything, is a film to which established artists have contributed -- artists whose contribution to the medium cannot, without injustice, be disregarded: director Nader Galal (who specialises in making films for superstars Nadia El-Guindi and Adel Imam) manages at times to transcend the written script by introducing innocent details that enter into the constitution of the frame and enrich the film with occasional flashes of beauty and social implications. He is helped by excellent camerawork. In the external locations, particularly those filmed in the streets of New York, we perceive how the variously shaped and sized billboards sometimes despotically take over the image. At other times, the camera reveals the visual character of the city, its special aspect and unique architecture. In the midst of all this, we glimpse a bird that has landed on a lamp post and looks at the ocean as if this entire urban world were of no concern to it -- a delicate, poetic and beautiful shot in the middle of the charged humour of this fast-paced story.
