Elie Semaan’s Honeymoonish, A Kuwaiti Marital Comedy That Tries Hard To Be Funny

Elie El Semaan’s Honeymoonish (original Kuwaiti title Shahr zii aleasal ) directed by Elie Semaan is like a big packet of rice cereals left out in the sun-soaked in water rather than milk: soggy, bloated and tasteless.

It is supposed to be a marital film about two people who marry as they have no choice. We do. Flee before it’s too late. Honeymoonish thinks two people shrieking into each other’s face from so close that they can’t tell the face from the butt, is funny.

It would be if this couple were Laurel and Hardy in the 1960s.

As two mature(?) people in a modern marriage, this rrrrom-quom(the Kuwaiti pronunciation, I presume) simply sucks(any pronunciation will do). Netflix’s Kuwaiti romantic comedy ostensibly explores a series of “comical” misunderstandings and dumbed-down disclosures as Noor (played by Nour AlGhandour) and Hamad (played by Mahmoud Boushahri) set off on honeymoon in a marriage of convenience. You see, Noor has been ditched at the altar, and Hamid’s father wants an heir or else he will disinherit his son(is this supposed to be a parody of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed?)

It isn’t only the marriage that is built on quicksand. The screenplay’s laughter treads very thin ice,resorting to constantly shrieking dialogues to cover up for the absence of genuine warmth and laughter.

I watched this over-stuffed turkey in the original Kuwaiti language. The dubbed English version would be presumably worse, as you will have to deal with two mismatched people speaking in unsynchronized conversations.

Set against the backdrop of a belligerent honeymoon , the Kuwaiti film uncovers the reality that Hamad and Noor couldn’t be more different from one another. This realisation costs us 1 hour and 40 minutes of our precious time, which we could have used to do something more useful, like banging our heads against the wall.

One of the ongoing “jokes” has to do with two aunts on the phone forbidding Hamid from consummating his marriage on his horny-moon, as Noor’s mother apparently breastfed him during his infancy, which makes him her spiritual brother.

It is mind numbing how much time this nonstarter of a sex comedy takes just talking about sex instead of doing anything . “Doing” of course is out of the question, what with the conservative subtext to every word and visual. Indeed,the one thing to admire in Honeymoonish is how the narrative circumvents the purdah protocol. It is like doing stand-up on an explosive mine.

The performances are shrill and squirm-inducing. Every character seems to be in this to get a glob of the glamour that is shredded into the show like flaky snow. What a waste of time!