Bosta l'autobus

This film manages to take everything that is corny and cheesy in Lebanese cinema and squeeze it into 2 hours and 20 minutes, then it also takes elements from bad Hollywood romantic comedies and adds it to the mix. Aside from the fact that the director decided to use the civil war as a background for the events (which has become a staple of Lebanese cinema) he does it badly, so badly, I found myself cringing involuntarily. The main character is attempting to assemble a Dabke (traditional Lebanese dance) dance troupe and add a contemporary flavor to it - contemporary flavor that he's gained from spending 15 years in the country that colonized Lebanon that is civil and advanced unlike the peasants there- with the help of his childhood friends. Along the way, we observe the diversity of characters and their daily struggles in such a society while trying desperately to gain a laugh or two from "Some Ol' typical Lebanese-y behaviors"... HAHA- NOT. After these old friends get together, suppressed emotions rekindle and they now have to deal with them, with the inclusion of some bad Dabke choreography and singing that really serves nothing.

Conclusion: this movie is bad. And Lebanese cinema has good directors, Phllipe Aractanji does not fall in that category. People should stop giving him money to make films.

I'm Canadian Lebanese, my auntie brought me this film from Lebanon as a present telling me it's a hit in Lebanon... at first i thought that it was another low-budget movie with bad actors and didn't really want to watch it...But then having nothing to do, i gave it a try and it changed my whole view about Lebanese movies: the direction was great(same for the camera shots) the quality of the image was comparable to a western movie, the actors did a big effort, the story and dialogs were excellent... the movie also deals with lots of Lebanese every day troubles and it makes the whole religious segregation between Lebanese just not worthy and ridiculous(i see a lot of those things when i go to Leb every summer) the movie also opened my eyes on what Lebanese can achieve...

Bosta has so many meanings it has its drama but also the nice vacation trips! A moving story - so nice to watch - a nice story for the first long metrage for a talented director

This film starts with an old man holding up traffic and taking a pee, right in the middle of the road, on a car battery to get it started. I thought for 35 minutes inward that this was a bad comedy, I thought it had way too much music queues, (not singing just background music or Alia singing into a microphone for a recording) but yet all that time I thought so differently from what this movie actually is.

Without any knowledge of what this movie was about going in, I could not possibly tell you early in the film that this is a Musical Drama, with themes of both the aftermath of the Lebanese Civil War and creativity in dance. As a viewer outside of the Middle East you can probably tell now this movie threw me off guard a bit.

The acting in this movie is not very good, not horrible by any means, but noticeable. I liked some of the music, mainly the dabkes oddly enough I found them quite enjoyable. The songs in this musical however are quite bad, mostly unimportant and seem like filler. They could've made this film better by only having the actual dance scenes as the music.

Speaking of which, the "score" or "Soundtrack" or whatever you would want to call it (ambient noise mixed with queues of a woman singing) are very odd. There is a lot of landscape shots of the Lebanon countryside and city shots that have this exact same queue over and over again. It often looks and sounds like a horror film at times whenever these shots occur, or at the least the use of these queues are just inappropriate with their frequency and even timing in a lot of scenes.

The rest of the movies elements are in the actual story, which I shall sum up as a troupe of dancers are dancing this new form of the traditional dabke, and while I didn't really get it in the beginning of the film, which is just confusing, this difference really made a showing at the wedding scene later on, where they perform and tick a lot of traditional older men off. They essentially then have a dance off and its not the worst thing. It was a bit of fun.

I won't tell the ending of course. But I will say overall the story while its not great is probably the best thing with the movie alongside the dabke music if you like it. (If you don't, avoid this film like the plague) So I can give it a mediocre rating, it's not the worst thing I've seen, not nearly.

This film is about a Lebanese folk dance troupe that goes on tour. They do traditional "debke" but also modernized, even hip hop, versions, which are controversial in their country.

I am not Lebanese, nor Arab, so for me this was a treat on several levels. I got to see a country that's been in the news a lot, but about which I know little. The music is wonderful, the dancing interesting. Contrary to what most people here are saying, I thought the acting amateurish and the plot predictable. Mediocre cinematography.

But that's not the point -- this is a fun movie. It's a bit longer than it should be, but the music is thrilling. Also funny. I saw it at the Arabic Film festival in San Francisco, and most of the audience was Arabic if not Lebanese, so I got a sense I didn't get all the humor, but most of the dialog is accessible to anyone. If you like Middle Eastern music, don't miss it.