Udhabaani: the Review

I’ll tell this to you straight: I miss the Bakhabaru News. So I guess this is a tribute to them. This one is for you, Bakhabaru. You are the greatest news team that ever existed. We need you dudes. You and your reviews.

Also, this is my first review.

I went to work the other day, and saw that my office people had a surprise waiting for me. A ticket to Udhabaani the movie. I protested at first, but finally decided to go, considering I got the ticket for free, and all my workmates were going. It could be a fun night.

Boy, was I ever wrong. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

All my office mates decided to meet up at Olympus. I arrived there and noticed a “house full” board on display. Funny, as I got the ticket for free, along with 20 other people. I wondered how many people actually paid to be there

The movie was preceded by a bunch of “trailers” and some advertisements. It seemed to be looping. Ah, finally, the movie was about to begin. I admit I was looking forward to the movie… not for the experience of cinema, as I wasn’t expecting much out of the movie, but to scare the ever loving excrement out of the three girls who had sat in front of me. I nudged a workmate who was next to me, and he got the idea. The opening credits seemed very convincing that this was a horror movie. With creepy sound and including the old weathered text effect. Unfortunately this was the highlight of the whole film. I discovered that this film was made by a bunch of people calling themselves “Learner’s Productions”. Whatever hopes I had withered away.

The movie begins and I was slapped in the face with a song and dance number. Literally. This film has a way of slapping your face with a song number. I swear, once this girl was crying her eyes out and the next second, she was singing in the rain with the hero, and the next, she was crying again. I deduct that three fourths of the dialogue of the heroine were said while crying. And every time she cries, she looks like she is having a stroke or is about to regurgitate her lunch and/or dinner. Not to mention the cheesy dialogue.

The heroine comes from a dirt poor family. So poor that when her parents are introduced in the film, they are discussing how they are going to survive. Apparently they have no money for food, or clothes. But apparently they have money to have the mother’s eyebrows done. They also have money for a ton of foundation that goes on the mothers face. And also they have a truckload of money for the amount of lip gloss that the mother wears. That’s just the mother. The only poor looking person is the father. But he gets killed off almost 15 minutes after he is introduced and is replaced by a sea monster. Which brings me to…

…the sea monster. Apparently the evil entity that haunts this movie is a horny sea monster. Yes. This evil spirit/monster of the sea, which Maldivians lovingly call a ‘fureytha’, wants to bang this chick. All I can say is, kudos. This thing wanted to sleep with this girl so bad, it killed (and probably ate) her father, disguised itself as him, and also guised itself as her boyfriend, while killing a total of four people in the course of the entire film, including the girl’s mother. What guys will do to get laid, huh?

The movie seemed endless. Three whole hours. The plot didn’t progress. The whole movie could have been summed up in 20 minutes of footage. That’s if you include a few dance numbers.
The director ‘Amjay’ went on a celebrity type show and said that this movie is not like anything any Maldivian film has ever accomplished. That may be right, I don’t know, because I don’t have anything to draw from here. But it makes me think… if this is the best that filmmaking in the Maldives has to offer, how full of crap must be the rest of the films that hit the screens of Male’?

The best part of the movie has to be when the hero gets into a legendary fight with the sea monster, and ultimately chopping its head off with a sword. But even that wasn’t good. Because it didn’t happen. There was no fight. There was no confrontation. There was no closure. After three hours of unholy melodrama, we were treated to a “to be continued” screen. And the lights went on, and I lost it and screamed out something along the lines of “what the fuck was that?” (rough translation)

Needless to say, that was the most boring, tiresome, and wasted three hours of my entire life. And this movie wasn’t even funny. Some unintentionally funny moments, though. Its hard to take a movie seriously when actors and actresses start crying at the drop of a hat and then strikes random dance poses.