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

We’re
assuming you’ve already seen the trailer for the film in which Helal dons a
Spongebob costume and sings some asinine song with lyrics along the lines of
‘I’m Spongebob, cumin yellow’. Yeah, well we’re here to tell you that that
isn’t even the worst part of the film. 

The
film’s story – if it can even be called that – revolves around a Tamer
Hosny-esque popstar named Weeso (Helal), who while looking for a wife from his
Upper Egyptian village to bully and do double-duty as a domestic slave, marries
a meek-looking woman named Heshmat (Boshra) who, unknown to the entire village
and her new husband, doubles as masked menace/crusader El Khott.
Not particularly amusing shenanigans ensue as Weeso finds himself terrorised in
his own home and forced to live with a woman who only responds to masculine
pronouns.

Let’s
start with the title. Why choose a title that evokes comparisons to the largely
successful and popular Mr & Mrs Smith?
Because that production was a lot of things that this one only wishes it were.
Pitt and Jolie had chemistry for one; they’re both great actors and their film made
sense. None of that is applicable where Mr
& Mrs Eweis or its leads are concerned.

Moving
on, the story is illogical at best and the film takes the tack of covering up
the absurdity with periodical songs, none of which are very good. The film
tries to tackle a bunch of different issues such as corrupt police, thugs,
selling out, revenge, misogyny, etc and does none of them well. It skips
between topics in hope that something will eventually stick. For example, one
subplot revolves around El Khott’s attempt to avenge the Palestinians and incorporates
a kidnapped Israeli official, State Security and the FBI. The story goes
nowhere fast until it’s simply abandoned in favour of transitioning onto the
next of its many ridiculous phases – this time involving a tacked on, highly
unconvincing romance between the titular leads who go from mutual loathing to
unbearable horniness within the span of a couple of trite declarations of love.

The
actors aren’t much better than the material they’re given either. Helal chooses
to incessantly mug for the camera, pulling some highly exaggerated, deeply
unfunny facial expressions in the process, while Boshra’s sense of comedic
timing is skewed, though credit to her for being the one of the rare Egyptian
actresses in recent memory to appear on screen without three pairs of fake
eyelashes. As a couple they’re probably the least believable part of a pretty
nonsensical film, though this is less the actors’ fault and more because their
relationship isn’t fleshed out in the slightest. We’ve reached our saturation
point as far as Edward is concerned – seriously, he’s in everything – and this
feels kind of mean since she’s still a kid and all but the less said about
Janna, the better.

This
film was plainly painful to sit through and after this year’s crop of dismal
Eid releases, we’re really hoping that Sa3a
We Nos, which finally looks like it’s nearing its release date, proves to be
the good Egyptian film that we’re desperately in need of.