Breaking Fast

BREAKING FAST is everything I love in a romcom. It's funny, sweet, and heartwarming, with completely relatable characters. It's an old school premise (2 characters fall in love over the holidays amidst a backdrop of shenanigans from friends and family), with a modern day twist (it's Ramadan instead of Christmas and the lead role is a gay, Arab, Muslim man!). Amin El Gamal (the best friend) and Rula Gardenier (the mom) are absolute scene stealers! And the chemistry between the 2 leads, Haaz Sleiman and Michael Cassidy, is palpable and sizzling. This movie is an absolute delight!

Finally! A film about Arabs that doesn't involve tired tropes and stereotypes. And a beautiful love story at that. This film has everything-its romantic, funny, and clever. It thoughtfully explores what it means to be both Muslim and gay, without assuming those two identities are in conflict with one another. The writing, acting, and directing is top notch. The music is incredible and adds so much to the story. This is quickly becoming one of my favorite films!

A fantastic feel-good movie well worth watching. Funny, touching and enjoyable from beginning to end. It's so good to find a gay film with such a decent story, great acting and believable characters.

This movie has heart and represents a group of people not seen on the screen very often. It's beautiful and happily romantic

Ok so the 10 I give is just to negate the 1s by the "peaceful and loving" people

Having said that I enjoyed the movie. It's flawed and mostly because of the writing. It reminds me of the last decade, the good ol'days before all the craziness. Also I recognised the main actor from Nurse Jackie in which he played a gay nurse called Mo'Mo and I still remember the blindingly bright smile of Michael Cassidy from the underrated Privileged. I'm so glad to see both of them again. Takes me back to an era which romcoms are still being shown regularly on the big screen.

Unfortunately the scenarios are unrealistic, IMO IRL Sam and Mo wouldn't be friends unless they're best friends since childhood. And it's labelled a romcom so I shouldn't expect anything realistic but there's not much romance and comedy in it (instead so many awkward moments), I only LOLed once from the facebook post from Mo's mom late into the movie . And the escape clause is the ramadan/fasting month that forbids impure thoughts. So it is very demure, although this means that this movie is safe to watch with your parents. But not really because it shows the gay world as 100% hedonistic/impure *sigh*. Also the promo shots show Mo's bare @$$ so it's misleading.

I think the movie would work better as a TV show. It did say what it wants to say but I wished it has more romance and sweetness (more time to cook the ingredients/the topics that it want to touch on) It's a shame that it's set during ramadan. Gay movies are often very low on entertainment value (so much death and misery) so I guess this will do for the weekend. One last note: it's a hopeless situation between the two communities thus Venus herself must come down here to convince her worshippers to stop hating on us.