The Definitive Guide to Living in the Capital , Cairo , Egypt

Omar (Kasim) and
his best friend (Salam) find themselves in deep trouble after graduating from
high school with extremely low grades that won’t get them into any universities in
Egypt. So, they turn to their best friend Moody (Abed) to help them create a fake
university called EUC with a fake website in order to appease their furious and
worried parents.

When their parents
insist on visiting this new university to check it out, they use the villa of Omar’s
girlfriend (Koura) as a presentable location for the fake college and hire
people to pretend to be students there.

The next day, they discover that thousands of graduates in a similar predicament have also registered on the EUC’s website to apply for the university. They then decide to make a business
out of it, call it legit with proper licensing, and have real students instead
of the ones that they hired.

While the title seems
to be inspired by the American University in Cairo’s acronym, the film’s plot
is a direct rip-off from the 2006 US comedy flick Accepted. While remakes or borrowed plots aren’t necessarily a bad
thing; in this case, it does weaken the film as a whole and become insultingly
predictable for anyone who has seen the original. Unfortunately, the film’s
producers didn’t even try to bring any fresh or new ideas to this remake;
copying scene by scene from Accepted.

There is very little
acting in EUC and few funny moments. The only comic relief
comes from Lotfy Labib as Moody’s grandfather, who is bored out of his mind and
wants to be part of anything fun, whether it’s legal or not. Even though it’s a
comedy, it’s difficult to sense the characters’ concern when they receive the grades
that creates this crisis with their families and future. The script is
offensively unfunny: unlike Ahmed Mekky’s films, the actors fail to maintain
the balance of cracking jokes by using the slang of young Egyptians while
still respecting the audience’s intelligence – a real shame!

Egyptian films have copied
Hollywood plots before, such as El Ragol El
Abiad El Motawaset starring Ahmed Adam and Ezzat Abo Ouf, which was a remake of Nothing to Lose starring Martin Lawrence and Tim Robbins. Such
remakes can be acceptable if the material and the additional elements are
creative enough for an entertaining film, but EUC begs to differ and ends up as a weak remake with poor acting
and no creativity.