Amar Akbar & Tony

and 2016 continues to be the year of finding 'gems' in the film world. Keeping my promise to myself and watching more independent films than I have previously watched. Today I spent a wonderful ninety minutes watching a film that to be honest, needs more people to talk about it. I spend a lot of time reading about films, watching films, checking out trailers and going through press release articles to find diamonds among the sea of movies out there.But the only place I had heard about todays film was a solitary Twitter account that I had been following for a little while.

The film is Amar Akbar and Tony,

Written and Directed by Atul Malhotra and is available on iTunes,Amazon,Google Play,Virgin Media,Blinkbox,Talk Talk and Wuaki platforms. So what made the film a gem, but more to the point, what is Amar Akbar and Tony about? Well I am never one to give away plot points for a film, part of the beauty of discovering new films is to learn the story as you go alone with the characters. But to summarize the plot. I will borrow from the Internet Movie Database summary and describe it a realistic, multicultural coming-of age comedy drama following the lives of three childhood friends as they stumble through life from their carefree twenties into adulthood. Set in present-day London but beginning in the eighties. Such a charming film.

Amar Akbar and Tony had be by moment one with its realistic humour rather than scripted humour (although Im sure there was a script), the humour all felt very realistic, and the sort of dialogue and situations that could happen to any of us. We follow lifelong friends Amar (played by Rez Kempton), Akbar (played by Sam Vincenti) and Tony (played by Martin Delaney) who all come off as perfectly likable people straight off the bat. But don't just think that the film is all comedy. Amar Akbar and Tony (the film) is part comedy, but with a huge injection of drama mixed perfectly into a feature length film. It was strange once I reached the end of the film, which although lasted only an hour and a half, has left the characters extremely memorable in the same way, had I watched a 10 hour mini series.

There are no filler scenes in the film, and these are charactersI will think of when someone asks me for my favourite films I've seen. I was asked today what I felt the film reminded me of and I came up with Part East is East, Part Shameless and perhaps even Part This Is England. But Amar Akbar and Tony is such a fresh film and its been a total pleasure to have watched it today.

Firstly the screen writing: The film had no coherent storyline, jumping from comedy to tragedy to drama without any transitions and any attempt at laying the character backgrounds. I was left confused at the end: what was the film trying to show? The direction was mediocre, not a single scene stands out, whereas a few scenes stand out as failed attempts to inject some style into the otherwise turgid proceedings. SOme key scenes were very very badly done. In the scene when one of the protagonists of the film is reunited with his friend after a tragic few years, the director took the easy way out and completely ignored the potential to finally develop the characters.

The acting was a range- the one guy who stood out for me was Tony, his comedic timing and delivery was the saving grace. Karen David was the other extreme, very bad. The rest of the cast were passable to good.

But they are not the ones who let this cringe-worthy attempt at entertainment down- the blame must lie squarely with the director. No vision, no character development, just a hotchpotch of stereotypes shamelessly vomited under the banner of "feelgood". Sadly, this was as feel-sick as it gets.

I wouldn't say this film is awful in the sense of '1 out of 10' on IMDb... but it goes up there with 'pretty rubbish'

Now, the first 20 minutes or so seems promising... There was comedic elements to it and I thought "hmm, this could go somewhere"

Unfortunately though after around 25 minutes - it just drops. The jokes aren't funny, it has far too many story lines to focus on and I would also say it's possibly quite borderline racist - there's constant reference to 'Tony' as 'whiteboy' and although you can tell that the intention behind the film is to demonstrate 'liberal' British Asian attitudes, it overdoes it - and gives off the opposite to the desired effect.

The acting skills were abysmal for some of the characters - watch the film and you will see who I'm on about.

Overall - would I recommend watching it?

No, I wish I had followed my gut instinct and walked out instead of clinging to hope that it will get better... Only for the first 20 minutes or so of the film am I giving it a 3/10... the rest - it goes from 2.5/10 to 2.0/10 to the very end... 1.2/10!

Now granted the movies premise is that 3 religions can get along great is a good thing. I don't know how real life this is but i wasn't too concerned. The movie is very dramatic and protests honor killings. In the guise of attractive middle eastern people there is a story line that we should just all just get along.

I had to write something about this movie. Totally underrated. It's amazing. I see a lot off negative reviews complaining about "too many stories" or "no actual storyline". Has our attention span diminished to that point? It actually tells you everything, just pay attention! I wouldn't know how to describe this movie without a spoiler so I'll tell you this. If you ever wanted to know what immigrants go through in a different country while trying to pay respect to their heritage, watch. I don't care who you are, immigrant, resident or citizen, you will relate. It's not comedy, it's not drama, it's all put together very beautifully. Respect