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As'hab wala Bizness (Is it Friendship... or Business?)
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Starring: Mustafa Qamar, Hani Salama, Monalisa, Nour
Directed by: Ali Idrees
The cairolive.com rating: 7 (out of 10)
The latest effort by the El-Adl brothers production team, the kingmakers of modern Egyptian cinema -- who practically invented the infamous "cinema el-shabab" craze of youth comedies led by Mohamed Heneidi -- is not what you'd expect it to be. As'hab wala Bizness (Is it Friendship... or Business?) is far from a light comedy with a simple political message thrown-in for effect, like so many of their previous efforts. This time the El-Adl clan have put together a full-fledged drama with Israel as one of its main themes. This is, in fact, a film about the Palestinian intifada.
The film's plot involves the intense professional and personal rivalry between two presenters at a fictional satellite TV station called Network 2000. (The second film this summer, by the way, to feature a fictional station; the other being Heneidi's Ga'ana Al-Bayan Al-Tali's The Truth News Channel -- it's a good thing these channels are make-believe since their names are pretty unattractive...). Network 2000's main selling point is entertainment. You won't see any heavy issues dealt with on this channel, but plenty of game shows with ludicrously easy questions, and talent competitions that border on the inane.
Qamar and Salama are the type of presenters viewers supposedly can't get enough of -- superficial to the core. Their goal is to look as good as possible in front of the camera, and make viewers feel they can be stars too, whether via Salama's talent show, or Qamar's "Dollars, Dollars" competition. Meanwhile, channel head Sami El-Adl is trying to choose one of them for a new ad campaign sponsored by a foreign company -- there's big money involved, and plenty more fame, and both guys want it more than anything else.
But then politics rears its ugly head, as El-Adl gets the fancy idea that the channel should send someone out to cover the Intifada, even if only in the light-hearted way Network 2000 is famous for. "If we don't do it, we'll look bad," the sleazy channel head tells the board of directors, who immediately agree to the proposal.
Which leads us, then, to the crux of the movie: while one of the two guys is chosen to go to Palestine, the other is handed the ad campaign, and the learning process begins. The guy who goes to cover the Intifada, of course, wakes up to the total and utter meaninglessness of what they've been doing back home, while their brothers and sisters in Palestine are suffering under the brutal Israeli occupation forces.
The movie's title soon becomes clear, as one member of the happy-go-lucky group gets serious only to discover that everyone else is just after the money. As in, morality can be lonely sometimes...
Is this a move by the El-Adl group, always one step ahead of the pack, from shabab comedy to shabab issues films? Although the feel-good ending is full of ironies, symbolic confusion and mixed messages, in any case, it is a good sign that youth films are no longer afraid to tackle serious subjects, without being labeled fringe. This, after all, was one of the most heavily marketed films of the summer, with giant billbboards all over town for the past few mnonths inspiring everyone to wonder when the film was actually going to come out.
High production values and a core premise overcome some of the film's weak dialogue and the attempts at humor that fall straight on their face... The intifada scenes are probably some of the most realistic movie-making in Egyptian film history. They are gritty, and heart wrenching, not like the cartoon intifada covered by announcer Heneidi in Ga'ana al-Bayan al-Tali.
Mustafa Qamar's singing is acceptable, and doesn't really cut into the drama as much as it could have, had it been handled by less experienced moviemakers. Of the other stars, Monalisa is the weakest link, while Nour, traditionally a siren, here plays the serious type. Salama finally stops staring all the time, but the real star is newcomer Amr Wakid, who plays the crowd-pleasing role of Jihad, a Palestinian activist with a surprise up his sleeve.
Showing at:
Renaissance, Cosmos, Tiba, Wonderland, Geniena, Normandy, Karim, OG Maadi, Odeon
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