This year's summer films have thus far been a disappointing crop, writes Hani Mustafa A few years ago, summer was the longest film season, and many films of different genres competed to gain a slot. The unlucky ones were screened in the second half of September, right before the school year starts, and therefore they lost an important portion of their audience of school-age students. By the first weeks of October films also tended to lose their university student audiences, and in any case audiences by then had become saturated by summer movies that had been on show since May. Luckier films got a slot after the university exams in mid-June. The summer season forces film distributors to choose light films that appeal to a wide audience, especially young people after an exhausting exam season. Since the 1990s and into the three first years of the new millennium, comedies monopolised the summer season. However, today they are no longer able to do so. This year the summer season has shrunk, as Ramadan, starting in mid-August, has limited the season to the period between the beginning of June and 22 August. This has led to a reduction in the competition for this year's offerings, including Bobbos, starring Adel Imam and directed by Wael Ihsan, Teer Enta, directed by Ahmed El-Guindi and written by Ahmed Mekki, Omar Taher and Ahmed El-Guindi, and Alf Mabrouk, starring Ahmed Helmi and directed by Ahmed Galal. The last-named film was written by Khaled Diab and Mohamed Diab. Adel Imam ruled Egyptian film comedy for three decades between the 1970s and the 1990s, when many critics thought that his advancing age would affect his ability to compete with a new generation of comedians, including Mohamed Heneidi, Mohamed Saad and the late Alaa Walieddin. Yet, Imam has appeared like a Phoenix rising from the ashes time and time again, and he is still grossing the highest box office earnings. After presenting a weak film like Prince of Darkness in 2002, directed by his son Rami, following this with Ariss men Giha Amniya, directed by Ali Idris, that was a hit with the audience in 2004, there followed another weak film, Al-Sifara fil Omara written by Sherif Arafa. This year, Bobbos was attacked by critics because the comedy in the film seemed to depend solely on sexual innuendo. The script tells of a businessman, Mohsen Hindawi, played by Adel Imam, who has problems with his creditors and is unable to solve them except through further bank loans. Imam seems to have wanted to continue with the businessman character he played in the film Morgan Ahmed Morgan in 2007, directed by Ali Idris. Youssef Maati, the scriptwriter, has tried to give the film a political flavour, with the businessman's loans not being contractible in the absence of guarantees. Maati seems to have wanted to create comedy from discrepancies between guarantees on paper and guarantees in reality. Such gags, usually unrelated to the film's plot, are common in the opening scenes of Adel Imam's films. In Bobbos, a group from the bank visits Hindawi's projects in order to evaluate them. His tobacco factory turns out to be a place where guards gather to smoke shisha. This joke is repeated in several different forms, as the filmmakers seem to believe that it alone can provide the comedy. After such failed projects, we are introduced to a man called Nizam Bey (played by Ezzat Abu Ouf), who is a character close to authority (Nizam means something like "order of the system"). Nizam Bey knows everything and does not give Hindawi a chance to talk. He summarises all the latter's problems in two sentences, and his son becomes the solution to Hendawi's problems when he becomes his partner. Nizam Bey then puts pressure on the banks to extend the required loans. Hindawi gives the son the nickname "Bobbos", and the film ends with Nizam Bey losing his position to a new man called Fikri Gidid ("new thought"), played by Sameh El-Seraiti. This new man begins his duties by meeting with businessmen in order to facilitate loans for them that he believes will expand their investments. He also has a son that Hindawi calls "Bobbos". The viewer would be mistaken if he believed that the film belongs to any symbolic school of cinema, even though the names Nizam and Fikri clearly refer to old and new forms of political power. The transition seems to be from authorities that control the market to an absolutely free market, with the film depicting the corruption that can result from both systems. The film does not aim at political satire, but is rather a weak account of some of the problems hindering Egyptian society, for example businessmen who face troubles and then escape abroad, to London in particular, in order to avoid them. Moreover, Adel Imam does not give his best in the film. The comedy depends for much of the time on sex -- not a problem in itself, except that here everything seems to depend on gestures borrowed from Imam's previous films. The fight scenes between him and Yossra, for example, are similar to those played out with Shereen in the film Bekhit wa Adila. No scene in the present film is particularly well written, aside from one between Adel Imam and Ashraf Abdel-Baqi, in which the latter wants to complain about life's hardships to the president. To help him rehearse what he wants to say, Imam poses as the president. Imitating presidents causes laughs the world over, and Imam himself imitated the president in Al-Mansy, directed in 1993 by Sherif Arafa. In this scene, however, the comedy does not come from the imitation, but from the reversal of the roles at the end when Abdel-Baqi takes on the role of the president and starts listening. The ending of the film also puts it among the worst that Imam has made in his extensive career. Until recently, he was among the highest box-office earners, and he enjoyed extensive overseas distribution as he is immensely popular in the Arab world. It was therefore logical to assume that when Imam chose Wael Ihsan to direct his latest film he was expecting the same sort of success that the latter has achieved with Mohamed Saad, Ahmed Helmi, Mohamed Heneidi and other new comedy stars. Yet, Bobbos' s problems can not be solely blamed on the director. They are primarily the result of deficiencies in the script. Repetition is an ideal way for an actor to commit suicide, and this is what Imam has been doing for years. Perhaps the extent of the artistic disaster that Bobbos represents will help him find his way back to the top in the coming years. Repetition of sorts, albeit only in its early beginnings, is also something associated with Ahmed Helmi, and in his film Keda Reda he clearly wanted to change his usual comic line. In this film, Helmi challenged himself to play three separate roles. In Naasaf Ala El-Ezaag, which came out last year, Helmi tried to present a blend of comedy, social interest and tragedy to Egyptian audiences in a film based on the US film A Beautiful Mind. The success of the latter film seems to have driven Helmi to his new film, Alf Mabrouk, which is based on a similar idea and structure. The film's comedy depends on the performance of the lead actor and the dialogue. This appears funny in the beginning when we are introduced to the details of the main character's (Ahmed) daily life. The comedy starts when Ahmed is apparently able to predict how his family will behave and what they will do; this alarms him, since a previous day's events are being strangely repeated. At the end of the film, comedy turns to violent melodrama. The film's subject is borrowed from the American film Groundhog Day, and even though the titles of Alf Mabrouk state that the idea of the film is taken from the ancient Greek myth of Sisyphus, it is easy to tell after watching the film that it is in fact closer to Groundhog Day then it is to the myth in which endless repetition is seen as part of Sisyphus's condition. The characteristics of the lead character in the two films are identical. In the American film, the lead character, a depressive TV journalist, is shown treating people selfishly. Since his depression stems from the repetitiveness of his daily life, fate drives him to try real repetitiveness, with his day being replayed over and over again. Finally, things change when he falls in love with a coworker and gains her love in return. The choice of day in the American film is also significant, since it is the day on which winter ends and people start to enjoy the coming of spring. This is the day on which the "groundhog" of the film's title comes out of hibernation. Spring in the film is the season of love and renewal, and winter is the season of monotony and repetitiveness. Alf Mabrouk loses these meanings since the day that is repeated is the day on which the lead character gets married. The film paints a picture of a selfish man who lives a life without real depth and does not care to understand, or to try to find out, the truth. He believes his mother is a drug addict, that his father has stolen money from his workplace, and that his sister is sleeping with his best friend. Eventually, he finds out the truth, which is that his mother is suffering from cancer and has to take painkillers to ease her pain, his father did not steal the money, but took it out of his pension to pay for Ahmed's apartment, and his sister is in love with his friend, who wants to marry her. Yet, there is no structure to the drama through which we find out these things. Instead, they are simply signalled through what Ahmed himself says. The fact that it simply borrows from an American film is not the only thing that could be taken against the film. The idea of repetition should be handled carefully, as it may cause boredom, as it does in Alf Mabrouk. Indeed, the boredom of the film is not a quality of the editing, but is an intrinsic part of the film itself. This was not the case with the original film, where director Harold Ramis and scriptwriter Danny Rubin changed small details within the frame, while maintaining the rhythm of events. The editing of Groundhog Day also made it one of the most important films of the 1990s. As for cinematography, many of the scenes in Alf Mabrouk are out of focus. The film is a one-man show, a crucial mistake, as the drama revolves around Ahmed. Yet, sometimes borrowing from foreign films is not such a bad thing, especially if the results are suitably "Egyptianised". This is the case with Teer Enta, starring Ahmed Mekki. The opening credits say that the film is inspired by Bedazzled, also directed by Harold Ramis in 2000. This in turn was taken from the legend of Faust, who sold his soul to the devil in exchange for eternal happiness. Bedazzled depends for its effect on the lead character wanting a certain woman to return his love. The devil helps him, giving him seven wishes before he possesses her, yet each time he fails to gain her love. Bedazzled and Teer Enta are identical in basic idea. In the Egyptian version, a vet, Dr Bahig (Ahmed Mekki), an introverted young man with no experience, has been raised by his grandfather and lived alone most of his life. Scriptwriters Omar Taher, Ahmed El-Guindi and Ahmed Mekki add details that give an Egyptian touch to the film and make it stand out from the American version. Selling your soul to the devil is a Western idea, influenced by the Christian church in particular. In the Arab version, it is a genie who grants wishes, and it is this genie, Mared (Maged El-Kidwani), who is the alternative to the devil in Teer Enta. Mared is a kind genie whose problem is that he has been failing his middle- school certificate for years. Before he can pass it, he needs to grant a human's wishes. The experiences the lead character goes through with the help of the genie are aimed at winning his sweetheart's attention. They draw on sources familiar from Egyptian youth culture. Thus, Bahig is presented as a fitness instructor who cares about his looks in an exaggerated manner, and as a not-so- talented singer who is nevertheless famous and popular. The filmmakers make fun of such types, especially of singers who have an undeserved and dedicated audience. Elsewhere, the film draws on the history of Egyptian film in its use of details of an upper Egyptian man, patriarch of a clan, in an episode that makes reference to the famous film Shai Min Al-Khouf, directed by Hussein Kamal in 1969. The man even makes fun of himself when he replays the character of Haitham Dabbour, which he played in the sit-com Tamer wa Shawqia and the films Morgan Ahmed Morgan and H Dabbour. Since the filmmakers draw on particular visual memory, they do not forget to base one of the stories on the traditional, melodramatic musicals of Bollywood, using all the usual details, including music, singing, violence, costumes and set. They also mimic the scene, made famous on Youtube, where a fight erupted between the national football team's coach, Hassan Shehata, and the player Mido in the Africa Cup in 2006. They do not shy away from depicting a stereotypical Arab tourist, to which Mekki's details and acting add a lot of originality. Donia Samir Ghanem, playing Laila, his love interest, is his equal in depicting the female characters in each section of the film. Throughout the history of Egyptian films, their makers have been keen on ways to make audiences laugh, whether through original scripts, or through those taken from foreign sources. The determining factor, however, has always been how much creative effort is put into the film and how genuine and spontaneous is its structure and treatment.
