Youssef Rakha can barely cherish what few laughs he gets Mohamed Heneidi's most recent vehicle, Fuul Al-Seen Al-Azim (The Great Fuul of China) is an outrageous story of crime, love and the pursuit of happiness, conceived of and directed by the acclaimed Sherif Arafa of Al-Irhab wal-Kabab (Terrorism and Kebab) fame. While testifying to the power of this filmmaker's trademark comic-strip-like visuals (a simplistic style that seems to work only in comedy, having proved ineffective in films like Mafia ), Fuul Al-Seen Al-Azim nonetheless suffers from a weak plot (the script is written by Ahmed Abdalla), lack of relevance to day-to-day life in contemporary Egyptian society (this is one of the main reasons behind the success of this brand of star-centred new-wave comedy) and a somewhat worn-out performance by the short man of the genre. Yet on the whole the viewer is unlikely to feel cheated of the ticket price. The film is expensively made indeed, something that critics who bemoan the lack of funding necessary for resuscitating a highbrow film industry are likely to find annoying. But the money shows not only in the sets, editing and special effects (as always in Arafa's films, the latter are almost wholly filched, in this case from the late- 1990s Chinese hit Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon ), but, more importantly perhaps, in the ease with which Fuul Al-Seen incorporates a remarkable variety of elements, including several excellent Chinese actors (the names of whom are paradoxically not credited). Liberally sprinkled with ticks and tricks, the film is fast-paced and action- packed to overflowing. It is also full of exotic if hardly authentic Chinese flavours (parts of it were shot on site in the People's Republic). But compared to Heneidi's last film, Askar fil-Muaskar (Soldiers at Camp), for example, Fuul Al-Seen tends to disappoint when it comes to inducing laughter -- its very raison d'être -- owing as much to Heneidi's complacency as to Arafa's cavalier bid at mixing genres. Heneidi plays the hapless, monkey-like Mohie, a well-meaning young man with little brains and no courage. Mohie is the unwilling heir of a glorious criminal tradition presided over by his grandfather (Sami Sarhan) and kept alive by his three uncles (Mohie's father died in office, as it were, a long time before the action starts). In their insistent demand that he should take his father's place, the uncles embroil Mohie in an entertaining series of rites of passage as they forcibly indoctrinate him in the ways of the tough. Following a major booboo in the course of the first operation he actually undertakes, however, the family finally gives up on him, to his long-awaited relief, and he goes to seek his fortune with his mother (Soheir El- Barouni), a nearly blind nightclub performer (the accident in which she lost the use of her eyes, the viewer will find out at this point, was in fact the result of yet another -- stupid -- blunder of Mohie's, dating back to his childhood). When the grandfather shows up to explain that Mohie must hide (enemy criminals are after his life now that he took part in an operation), his stepfather, who works as a cook by day and plays the tabla to accompany his wife's belly- dancing performances by night, turns out to be so eager to get rid of him he sends him off to take part in an international cooking competition in his stead -- in China. Thus begins a complex, absurdly unlikely progression of events in which Heneidi as the perpetually terrified representative of Egyptian virtue fights against multinational vice. In the process of performing this task he falls in love with his Chinese guide, eludes involvement in a proposed assassination, wins the competition with a dish of fuul, stays with his prospective fiancée's family, who teach him all about martial arts and willpower, prevails against the bad guys who have been after him since he arrived and boards the plane back a changed man, no longer afraid of anything. Perhaps the most amusing aspect of the entire film is Mohie's fear of flying -- a key as much to his character as to the "message" of the story, which message, again typically of Arafa, is both banal and over emphatic: courage will manifest itself in even the most cowardly among us, so long as there is a virtuous motive (to circumvent the ploy of the multinational gang who, on realising that he comes from a criminal family, attempt to employ Mohie in their evil deeds) coupled by an exercise of the will and, most importantly, of course, the power of love. On his way to China Mohie is so terrified he ends up stuck in the toilet cubicle (whose vacuum flush he presses by mistake), but on his way back he looks composed even after the pilot announces that an emergency landing might be necessary. And it is in the course of this life-changing journey that his character undergoes transformation. Yet aside from Arafa's failure to intimate the slightest sense of real danger, whether at home during Mohie's indoctrination or in China during his experience with the multinational gang, who assign him yet another (Chinese) martial arts expert, it is precisely this mixed bag of moral and intellectual signals that undermines the credibility of the film a whole. In order for Heneidi to be funny, for one thing, he must stay terrified, and this takes away from the force of the climax, in which Mohie, having gained control of his physical and mental faculties after extended training with his father-in-law to be (this involves another series of trials that he endures in order to be approved of as a son- in-law), is supposed to bring about his Chinese alter-ego's defeat, somehow, single- handedly. His utter stupidity and consistent failure to impress the girl he loves likewise makes it hard to see why his feelings for her are reciprocated. Nor is there any dramatic justification for his winning the competition, considering that he never learned or even tried to cook in his life. The difficulty is compounded by Arafa's ambitious attempt at combining at least three genres into a seamless whole: comedy, romance and action. The latter is an arena in which this filmmaker has never excelled, and in which his comparative disadvantage (such filched or superficially contrived scenes will never be any match for the Hollywood originals) comes through. In this film the generic conventions of action also act to speed up the drama too much for any adequate assimilation of the potentially hilarious entanglements or the potentially moving encounters Heneidi goes through. One can only repeat the old adage: if you are going to be formulaic, you might as well stick by a single formula. That said, Heneidi always has presence, and the film's many shortcomings leave some room for laughter, after all. As easy viewing it delivers what it promises, in however muddled a form: amusing nonsense, not to mention just under two hours of medically approved mind-numbness. It remains to be seen whether Heneidi will ever again think to offer his audience more.
