rating:
(out of
4 stars)Sweden; 2000
Directed by Josef Fares; produced by Anna Anthony; written by Josef Fares
Starring Fares Fares, Torkel Petersson, Tuva Novotny, Laleh Pourkarim, Leonard Terfelt, Jan Fares
Below you will find a temporary review for this film. The real (better, more complete) review will be online very soon.
When a father tries to protect himself by punching people in the stomach
with his own belly it is hard not to laugh. There are more funny things like
this in 'Jalla! Jalla!' but it is also a serious movie with some serious
issues. Roro (Fares Fares) has a girlfriend named Lisa (Tuva Novotny). He
hasn't told his father because he wants him to marry a girl from Libanon,
where Roro is from. That girl is Yasmin (Laleh Pourkarim). Although she is
beautiful he doesn't want to marry her. Fortunately she doesn't want to do
that either, but she has to or she will be send back to Libanon. Roro and
Yasmin tell their family they will get married soon and the family,
especially Yasmin's brother Paul (Leonard Terfelt), starts planning the
whole wedding.
We also meet Roro's best friend Mans (Torkel Petersson). He has some
problems with his girlfriend, he is not able to perform sexually. Mans wants
to do anything to solve this problem and that brings some very funny scenes.
We see that he and Yasmin are attracted to each other.
'Jalla! Jalla!' is a very funny comedy and because it has some serious
things you can appreciate the funny things even more. There is some nice
cinematography and the performances, with a lot of directors Josef Fares'
family, are all very good. For a nice hour and a half this is your perfect
movie.