Review : Amma aur Gulnaz

The first promo of Amma aur Gulzar was everything but uninteresting. It instantly grabbed my attention, and I waited for this one to go on air, but then I saw the name of the director; my expectations went downhill, but I still managed to watch it.

This is the story of a mother (Fazia Hassan) and the troubles she has to go through, after the death of her husband, in bringing up her three children, Mehboob(Saleem Mairaj),Aashiq (hannan same), and Mashuq(Babar Khan). Her children are busy with their own stuff, and pay no attention to her miseries, and falling health. How things go from bad to worse, with the children ultimatelyrealizing their mistake make up rest of the story.

All the brothers have their own stories too, and the serial often also goes in the flashback, showing us the itchy romance between Gulnaaz and her husband, but unfortunately all the flashback portions, well almost all, are useless. I used to forward it[thank God for Internet] whenever such scenes were on-air. The neighbor's story is surely gripping, with some great twists.

Written by Shaista Aziz, the dialogues are good to bad. Some make you cringe, while some you take home. Seriously, the dialogue pattern is really weird. I must admit, Syed Atif Hussain, is not my favorite director, but here he shows improvement. The man tights his buckles and ups his game here, but it is still not enough to save this Titanic, which ultimately sank.

The culprit is who? I do not know. May be the poor casting of the main lead? Faiza Hassan is a great actress and her body language is perfect here, but she just does not pull it off with perfection. Her expressions go awry at places, but I must mention the look; it really is great, but then it wouldn't be complete mentioning how poor she is in the flashback scenes.

Or is it the writer? There are predictable twists - the kind that make you yawn - and strange cinematography. The editing could've been better, and I'd say same about the, I've-heard-it-before-background- music.

Faiza Hassan plays the lead role, but she isn't the show stealer. HereHannan Sameed gives praise worthy performance. The actor is a natural here. His body language, dialogue delivery is just perfect. The guy looks like the part he is playing. Superb! After this performance, he deserves to be more on our screen. Saleem Mairaj is a terrific actor too, and here he is in full form once again. Babar Khan has improved and how, but he has to bring the expressions to his eyes too, which do not reflect the dialogues he is uttering.

Parveen Akbar is brilliant and loveable, like always .Beenish Chohan is still struggling to get it right, and the effort shows. The rest of the cast does well. Humayun Saeed thankfully is in a, great, cameo only.

Over all, this is another poorly crafted screenplay and weakly planned serial. It kicks starts well and then goes nowhere. It's watchable but in bit and parts.Such a great opportunity wasted!

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