Yet another film comes forward with its own offering on the heist comedy genre. And yet another one fails to match what the Na Maloom Afraad franchise has achieved in both of its offerings.
Parchi falls in the Gol Chakkar, Wrong No and Jalaibee category in that the biggest heist it manages to pull off robs those who purchase the film tickets, and most of the laughs it generates are unintentional comedy.
Chupan Chupai, released a week before Parchi, also belongs to the same genre, but was closer to NMA than to the chasing pack. But Parchi too, like Chupan Chupai, fails to fulfill its immense potential – only that the failure in the former’s case is that much more prodigious.
Bash (Ali Rehman Khan), Bilal (Usman Mukhtar), Saqlain (Ahmed Ali Akbar) and Bhola (Shafqat Khan) are friends who live together and face challenges of varying degrees in their lives. The most critical of these is a parchi that Bash receives from local gangster Zodiac (Shafqat Cheema) for Rs 5 million.
They seek the help of Eman (Hareem Farooq) to get them out of the fix. The plan in short is to do to others what is being done to them, in order to pay the money.
Other subplots include the sibling rivalry of Bash and Bilal and Saqlain’s love story that is central to the gang’s plan of mustering the money to pay Zodiac back.
Unlike Chupan Chupai, Parchi does not have the luxury of borrowing an already successful script from elsewhere. The filmmakers evidently decide to keep the storyline itself in the periphery and focus instead on creating a string of scenes. What results is a narration that could have been wrapped up in around half an hour, but takes over four times the duration.
Again, like many of its peers, the biggest let down in Parchi is how the many rookie mistakes undermine the promise that it has elsewhere. For instance, there are several punches that in a tighter screenplay would have left the audience in splits, but in Parchi they are only served intermittently, and more criminally after a string of glaring misses.
When you come up with a really good one, once in every 12 attempts, it’s not only going to fail in mustering any laughs it will be a needless distraction from whatever else is unfolding. Fortunately, for the filmmakers on this particular front, there’s already too much happening without the film actually heading in any direction.
Parchi’s misfiring in comedy is also replicated by the glitches in the screenplay itself. The same scene would often carry the brilliant and the poor, rendering the former irrelevant more often than not.
What Parchi, however, does have is a promising cast with very evident acting ability. Ali Rehman Khan plays his character smoothly, while Usman Mukhtar has quite a few winning moments as well.
Ahmed Ali Akbar, who has one of the finest comic timing among the upcoming batch of actors, had a bit of a hit-and-miss in Parchi. But that was largely due to the script’s limitations that often forced him to act more than was asked of him.
Meanwhile, Shafqat Khan’s presence is superfluous, and his character is needlessly dragged throughout the film, using virtually the same hollow route to extract comedy out of him. That, too, is the script’s fault and not his.
Hareem Farooq, who is also one of the producers of the film, is meant to be the lead, and she plays the role well. Of course there are many glaring limitations – like the rest of the cast – but Hareem lives up to the gangster that she’s asked to play.
But veteran Shafqat Cheema is a clear misfit in what was at best an amateur film, and should be reviewed as such as well.
If you notice similarities between Parchi and Fukrey, it’s because there are. And yet Parchi would have been well advised to go for a complete remake, which might have resulted in a better production.
For, well over a month after its release, there are many Pakistani cinema houses that would still take Fukrey Returns over Parchi.
Parchi falls in the Gol Chakkar, Wrong No and Jalaibee category in that the biggest heist it manages to pull off robs those who purchase the film tickets, and most of the laughs it generates are unintentional comedy.
Chupan Chupai, released a week before Parchi, also belongs to the same genre, but was closer to NMA than to the chasing pack. But Parchi too, like Chupan Chupai, fails to fulfill its immense potential – only that the failure in the former’s case is that much more prodigious.
Bash (Ali Rehman Khan), Bilal (Usman Mukhtar), Saqlain (Ahmed Ali Akbar) and Bhola (Shafqat Khan) are friends who live together and face challenges of varying degrees in their lives. The most critical of these is a parchi that Bash receives from local gangster Zodiac (Shafqat Cheema) for Rs 5 million.
They seek the help of Eman (Hareem Farooq) to get them out of the fix. The plan in short is to do to others what is being done to them, in order to pay the money.
Other subplots include the sibling rivalry of Bash and Bilal and Saqlain’s love story that is central to the gang’s plan of mustering the money to pay Zodiac back.
Unlike Chupan Chupai, Parchi does not have the luxury of borrowing an already successful script from elsewhere. The filmmakers evidently decide to keep the storyline itself in the periphery and focus instead on creating a string of scenes. What results is a narration that could have been wrapped up in around half an hour, but takes over four times the duration.
Again, like many of its peers, the biggest let down in Parchi is how the many rookie mistakes undermine the promise that it has elsewhere. For instance, there are several punches that in a tighter screenplay would have left the audience in splits, but in Parchi they are only served intermittently, and more criminally after a string of glaring misses.
The filmmakers evidently decide to keep the storyline itself in the periphery and focus instead on creating a string of scenes
When you come up with a really good one, once in every 12 attempts, it’s not only going to fail in mustering any laughs it will be a needless distraction from whatever else is unfolding. Fortunately, for the filmmakers on this particular front, there’s already too much happening without the film actually heading in any direction.
Parchi’s misfiring in comedy is also replicated by the glitches in the screenplay itself. The same scene would often carry the brilliant and the poor, rendering the former irrelevant more often than not.
What Parchi, however, does have is a promising cast with very evident acting ability. Ali Rehman Khan plays his character smoothly, while Usman Mukhtar has quite a few winning moments as well.
Ahmed Ali Akbar, who has one of the finest comic timing among the upcoming batch of actors, had a bit of a hit-and-miss in Parchi. But that was largely due to the script’s limitations that often forced him to act more than was asked of him.
Meanwhile, Shafqat Khan’s presence is superfluous, and his character is needlessly dragged throughout the film, using virtually the same hollow route to extract comedy out of him. That, too, is the script’s fault and not his.
Hareem Farooq, who is also one of the producers of the film, is meant to be the lead, and she plays the role well. Of course there are many glaring limitations – like the rest of the cast – but Hareem lives up to the gangster that she’s asked to play.
But veteran Shafqat Cheema is a clear misfit in what was at best an amateur film, and should be reviewed as such as well.
If you notice similarities between Parchi and Fukrey, it’s because there are. And yet Parchi would have been well advised to go for a complete remake, which might have resulted in a better production.
For, well over a month after its release, there are many Pakistani cinema houses that would still take Fukrey Returns over Parchi.