An inane celluloid portrait of modern Egyptian man?
Mohamed Saad is a genius. a young man in front of me uttered these disconcerting words while standing in what seemed like a never ending queue for the top Egyptian comedian s latest film Katkout (Chick). It wasn t the first time I’d heard such words, yet the conviction behind every word of that sentence still astonishes me.
It all started six years ago with the release of the late Alaa Waley El-Din s smash El-Nazer (The Headmaster). Saad played the role of El-Limby, an uneducated, ill mannered thug who appeared to be under the influence 24/7. Saad s character became an overnight success and many producers saw significant potential in creating a spin-off movie. The first, El-Limby , stormed Egyptian movie theatres in 2002 to rapidly become the second highest grossing film in Egyptian box office history. Saad s popularity soared to even greater heights, despite the unanimously negative reviews that bombarded the film.
The next year, Saad unleashed Elly Bally Balak (What We re Both Thinking Of), a sequel to El-Limby. The film topped the box office yet again, selling more tickets than former box office champions Mohamed Henedi and Adel Imam. At that point, Saad realized that making another Limby film would be completely unacceptable to both the critics and his fans. And yet the commercial prospects of producing another Limby film were too enormous to ignore.
That s when Saad and his faithful comrades came up with the nifty idea of recreating the Limby character by changing his name, while keeping all the shtick that made his character so memorable. Of course, they would also stick to the same kind of thin storylines. The result was Okal and Booha, the box office champions of the last two years, surpassing LE 20 million each.
Mohamed Saad and his Limby character are not a mere cinematic trend or an outlandish commercial fluke, Limby is a true cultural phenomenon. His massive fan base is composed of various age groups from different social strata. Most of his fans have seen his last four movies several times and easily recite the inane dialogue crammed into every one of his films. It s hard to ignore such a phenomenon when people are shoving these lines in your face wherever you go these days.
Why is El-Limby so popular?
Some of his fans simply love the druggy tonality of his speech; others just relish his crude attitude and the sneaky ways in which he resolves his conflicts. But the most distressing fact though about El-Limby is that a considerable percentage of Egypt s young men can easily empathize with him. El-Limby is not an entirely unique character after all; men who share similar personality traits with El-Limby populate Cairo s alleyways and other numerous parts of Egypt. In fact, many of Saad s fans claim that El-Limby accurately embodies the spirit of the modern Egyptian man. El-Limby, Okal, Booha, whichever name you choose to call him, is essentially a man of no skills, lacks initiative and ambitions and holds no appeal for any sensible person. His stupidity is legendary and the methods he employs to reach his inconsequential objectives, which are usually formed by unusual, illogical external circumstances, should be studied and gathered into a new textbook about life in modern Egypt.
Katkout, the latest installment of El-Limby, is the last of the major summer movies to be released this year. The film was released in approximately 100 movie theaters (the largest number of theaters assigned to a single film in recent history) and is expected to, yet again, top this year s box office.
Believe it or not, I don t mind brainless, fun flicks that offer a good 90 minutes of pure entertainment. Yet, I never found El-Limby films either funny or entertaining. These movies were nothing more than unworthy attempts of a man trying hard to be funny and failing miserably. Katkout continues these attempts and is distinguished by being Saad s worst movie so far.
The character Katkout is the saeedi (southern Egyptian) version of El-Limby with a much lower IQ. The film starts with Katkout preparing to be killed by another family in Upper Egypt for some absurd, unclear reason that neither Katkout nor the audience can fully comprehend. Later on, he is rescued by a bunch of cops who transport him to Cairo in order to prepare him for a mission involving national security. It turns out that Katkout possesses an uncanny physical resemblance to a terrorist named Youssef Khoury who was preparing for a terrorist attack before he was haunted down by our always dependable police forces. After being set up for the assignment, we learn that a crooked terrorist organization, of unidentifiable nationality, is preparing to bomb Egypt s subway. Who exactly are these terrorists? What is the main reason for carrying out such an onslaught? The answers to these crucial questions are never provided to the audience, which honestly doesn’t seem to care.
This so-called-film is a one-man show. It s an empty vehicle for Mohamed Saad to indulge in some tasteless monologues, perform some physical comedy and have another go at trying to be a serious actor. Moreover, part of this uneven comedy attempts to be a spoof of spy films, but it sorely lacks the wit and imagination to create anything akin to the classic Egyptian films of the ’60s.
It s impossible to discuss the standard film elements of Katkout such as acting, direction, cinematography, music or editing because, simply, they don t exist. Tariq El-Amir s script, though, is a marvel; a screenplay that contains no plot, no logic, promotes all conceivable stereotypes about southern Egyptians, characters that lack even a single dimension, and a mind-boggling number of clichés tailored by the same people who churned out Shaaban Abdel Rahim s last masterpiece.
Watching Katkout was a pretty traumatizing experience. There wasn t anything to laugh about. The second half was too excruciating for me to bear. I tried to inject some happy thoughts into my head, but Saad s manufactured, nauseating nationalism expelled any remaining hope inside my broken soul. I wasn t the only one, though, since not a single laugh rang out during the last 30 minutes of the film.
Katkout is a hideous film, an ugly picture devoid of any actual entertainment or art. But Mohamed Saad will continue his reign over the Egyptian box office and flocks of people will continue to see his upcoming films regardless of Katkout s predictable destiny.
For the majority of Saad s fans, Katkout might be a minor disappointment but still worth seeing. For the rest of us in Sane Land, this is a worthy contender for the worst film of the year.
