Sajal Aly in 'what's love got to do with it' film - Page 2

Originally posted by: BlueWaters20

Watched this film in the cinema when it came out. It was crap.

Originally posted by: priya185

it was not crap why did you feel that?

Poor representation of British-Muslim life.

- Most British Muslims would never agree to marry someone from Pakistan the way the lead did in the movie. The very few Brits that do agree to marriages from Pakistan do so after a lot of convincing and pressurising from their parents. And that very rarely happens. Most British Muslims at marriageable age are now 3rd or 4th gen meaning their parents are British born and raised as well so they are even more distanced from Pakistan and wouldn't dream of marrying a Pakistan.

- The male lead was shown to be a fairly religious guy, on the straight path. That's fine. But then at the end they undermined all of that by suddenly revealing, he drinks alcohol, has engaged in relationships and suggesting he may even eat non-halal. All of this contradicted his character development up to that point.

There are British Muslims that do all of those thing (drink alcohol, date around, eat non halal). Those British Muslims may hide that aspect of their lives from their parents but are open about it with their friends and siblings. Not the way it's shown in this movie. No one had a clue what his real personality was (none of the other characters or the audience) untill in the last ten minutes he literally told everyone himself. It goes against the number one rule for writing 'show don't tell'.

- Where were his friends, did he not have any besides his white neighbour? I don't know a single British Muslim guy whose only friend is their white female neighbour. They show Eid celebrations in the movie, and no one but the white neighbours attend that either.

- When he does tell his parents their reaction is ridiculous. No way in hell would conservative Muslim parents like his (they wanted to arrange his marriage, wanted someone from Pakistan, broke ties with their daughter for marrying a white guy) respond to his confession with the equivalent of 'oh LOL that's so funny. Its ok we're all just living our lives right?'.

- The movie spent 90% of its run time talking about how arranged marriages can be a good choice for some people and work well. Jemimah Khan spent the entire promo tour waxing lyrical about how good arranged marriages are and how she felt an arranged marriage would have made her own life easier, blah blah blah. The last 20 minutes of the film totally undermined all of this and basically reinforced the stereotype that arranged marriages do not work at all.

- The entire situation with Sajal's character was weird. The way her character was behaving, I genuinely thought the story line was heading down the 'she's a closeted lesbian and can't be open about it because she's from Pakistan' route. When it finally came out that she was interested in another guy from Pakistan , I was like that's it? All that drama and fuss for this? She couldn't have just told her parents she liked someone? They seemed like a fairly liberal family who would be ok with their daughter having a preference. I don't know l don't have Pakistani relatives and have never been there so maybe it is this big a deal for a girl to like someone? It just seemed ridiculously blown out of proportion.

It was well intentioned but poorly written film, that did not accurately depict the lives of young British Muslims. A good opportunity for British Muslim representation down the drain.