[Note: a previous review of SAMMY AND ROSIE GET LAID had a few errors. Hanif Kureishi was the scriptwriter, not the director (and note the corrected spelling). Rosie was played by Frances Barber, not Claire Bloom. The father's name was Rafi, not Arif. -ecl]
SAMMY AND ROSIE GET LAID
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1987 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Soap opera minus the drama. Several
detestable characters interact with each other. Rating: -1.
Stephen Frears has directed a film that made it as a solid directorial success to his credit. He directed MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE for British television. It was picked up for international release and became one of the more successful art-house releases of the year, in spite of minor protests from the Pakistani community. The film shows Pakistanis in Britain and the portrayal included positive and negative characterizations. Frears's second international release is SAMMY AND ROSIE GET LAID. As might be imagined, there was something of a stir over the title. The MPAA refused to register the film under that title. Finally SAMMY AND ROSIE GET LAID was released without an MPAA rating. Well, was SAMMY AND ROSIE GET LAID worth the bruhaha? Not as far as I am concerned.
Rafi (played by Shashi Kapoor) was a high official in the Pakistani government who has come to London to live with his son and daughter-in-law: Sammy and Rosie. Their marriage is falling apart; each is taking other lovers as often as possible. All of the couple's friends seem to be interested in sex and little else. Rafi is shocked to see open lesbian relations among the friends. But then what right does Rafi have to be shocked? While he was in office in Pakistan he ordered brutal tortures vividly described in detail. There is a race riot going on outside. Claire Bloom has a small part as Rafi's once and current lover. Her part is, however, important in that she is the only person in the film who demonstrates any value as a human being.
This was not my cup of bile. Rate it a -1, taking into account its artistic pretensions. For entertainment value, it is not up to the stag films its title is reminiscent of.
Mark R. Leeper
ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper
mtgzz!leeper@rutgers.rutgers.edu
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews