The “Netflix” electronic platform began showing the Egyptian movie “My Bride” since February 13, and soon the movie occupied the list of the highest-watched works like any other modern Arab work on the platform, in light of the relative scarcity of these works, but does the film deserve this position? Even on a consumer platform like Netflix?
The movie My Bride, produced in 2021, starring Ahmed Hatem, Jamila Awad, Sabreen and Marwan Younes, directed by Mustafa Al-Barbari and written by Muhammad Bakir, and received a relatively short cinematic screening and revenues of more than 12 million Egyptian pounds, according to the “cinema” website, before it was removed from theaters, and then its heroes surprised us with the announcement. Showing it on Netflix.
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Romantic luxury residential complexes
The plot of the movie My Bride is similar to dozens of romantic comedies that have been presented since the beginning of the cinema, about a young man and a young woman who each suffer from their inability to find their other half, and under pressure from their parents, they are forced to attempt a traditional marriage, which does not work either, until they meet through By chance, a love story weaves its threads between them.
Here we have Sherif (Ahmed Hatem) and Delilah (Gamila Awad), two young men of relatively high-income living in a luxurious home in a modern apartment complex with their families, each with a very successful social and work life.
Because of the previous emotional frustration, they both question the reality of the other's feelings towards him at first, especially Delilah, who designs a set of merit tests to confirm Sharif's feelings.
The previous paragraph is the full summary of the film, as it actually contains nothing more than a simple repetitive story about a young man and a girl who meet and love each other, with a review of all the repeated clichés about the beginnings of the love relationship that certainly passed to the spectator in previous films or even in video songs.
Thus, the viewer continues until the last 20 minutes of the film, then its makers remember that any movie needs a knot, a climax and an end, so a crisis is fabricated between the two heroes that leads to separation, and the viewer is supposed to remain anxious to see how the two lovers will return to each other again?
The first thing that draws attention in the movie My Bride - after the usual story certainly - is its cinematic image, which is very bright and colorful, very similar to the ads for the luxury apartment complexes that we see on TV during the month of Ramadan, and they are filled with the most famous movie and television stars.
Indeed, the film consists of what looks like a group of different advertisements for the same apartment complex, during which we see different parts of it, and the camera rarely came out of these flowery areas, as if the events of the film take place on an isolated island and not inside Cairo, and that its heroes do not come out of what is called in the Egyptian dialect. The compound bike.
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Netflix movies and the bright Arab countries
Although the movie My Bride is not a Netflix production like the series “Searching for Ola” or the movie “Friends and Dearest” or “Al Rawabi School”, there is a common link between all these works and it is the brilliant image of Arab societies in these series, as if it should Remove any traces of ugliness or poverty before displaying any Arab work on this platform, even though there are many real works from other countries on it.
The matter does not stop at the level of the picture, or the decorations, but also extends to the quality of the stories themselves, and the crises in which their heroes fall, which present a distorted image of the Arab world, a mixture of actors speaking in different Arabic dialects, and repeated knots and plots from other works that exist in their original language on the platform.
My Bride, for example, is "Looking for Ola";
His heroes have no real problems, every little crisis they go through is solved directly in the next scene, with a supportive and loving social environment, light-hearted parents trying to help their children along the line, and everyone living in apparent financial affluence.
These works try to put themselves in the framework of "feel good movies", and these works have almost fixed rules, they combine romance and comedy, sometimes they include action, and certainly the ending is somewhat happy, with a handsome hero She is a beautiful heroine, and no matter how complicated things are, they tend to have fun with her.
Among the most famous of these films was American actor Tom Hanks, with films such as "Sleepless in Seattle" and "You've Got Mail" and others, and these films and series that belong to this dramatic format are characterized by being light and fun However, its plot carries a real complex that requires difficult solutions and barriers that the heroes must cross to reach happiness in the end.
Here, the matter differs from the Arab examples mentioned here, whose heroes do not need to make sacrifices to win in the end, because script writers do not really present them with real crises, so their lives go from easy to easier, so the happy ending does not have any meaning for the characters or scenes.
The movie My Bride is a work that tries to bring back the comedy romance to the cinema again, but with heroes of limited talent, and a plot whose makers are not serious enough to write a real knot and a climax, so it came out in the end similar to a group of commercials that were woven in the form of a movie.