The Derriere of Maldives

An exhaustively inefficient report by Ahmed Rushdie,
Borrowed from EW

It’s practically tradition now for us Maldivian movie goers to complain that there are no more funny movies being made in the Maldives, or that the comedians of yesteryear could sweep the floor with their modern day counterparts. And they would be right… for the most part. It’s true that the comedies of late haven’t enjoyed the success that the earlier ones did, but my argument is that just because they aren’t all that successful, doesn’t mean they aren’t funny. Funny is a relative term. What could reduce one person to a helpless puddle of mirth on the floor could make the next man sniff his nose and move on, stepping into the aforementioned puddle while going about it.

My aim is to prove that there is at least one man in the country who can still be considered funny enough to stand toe to toe – or failing that at least stepping on the other’s toe – with the best from our recent history. So without further ado I wrest the pleasure of presenting to you, the one person who in my humble opinion has become the saviour of Maldivian humour: Muhamma Kalo. Hang in there, ladies. Or at least try to control yourselves. I know it’s not every day you get the chance to express your feelings firsthand to the man who has contributed tirelessly to promoting sexual harassment of women on the streets in his movies/songs and consistently portrayed Maldivian women as dumb, pretty, gold digging idiots, incapable of independent or even rational thought.

I believe you’d be hard pressed to find someone as talented as Muhamma Kalo is when it comes to being funny. Mind you, everyone you know or everyone you meet in your everyday life are probably more talented, funnier and wittier than he is – in fact, if you happen to be in the toilet you could find a puddle of soap suds near the drain that has more personality and capacity to tickle your humerus than Muhamma Kalo does – but finding someone as talented as he is? In your dreams, pal!

During my research into the unparalleled anti-phenomena known as Muhamma Kalo, I subjected myself to a torturous regime of watching at least two alleged local comedies everyday for a week. It was near the end of the week that I, while on the verge of slashing my wrists*, finally realized what the point of Muhamma Kalo’s, if you’ll forgive the loose use of the word, movies were.

Apparently evolution contributes in spades to how this has come about. Maldivians have evolved; there is no doubt about that, and so has their sense of humour. What was once the bee’s knees have now become, metaphorically speaking, its elbows. What worked before doesn’t work that well anymore. The comedy genre needed to evolve to keep up with the evolved sense of humour and Muhamma Kalo was there to fill the evolution gap. Someone had to be the posterior end of Maldives.

All this time I had been thinking ‘inside the box’ (admittedly as good a place to look for misplaced humour as any other place) and been diligently on the lookout for any funny stuff that might have been inadvertently left behind when Muhamma Kalo had edited his movie. It was then that I decided to think ‘out of the box’. That was also when the epiphany hit: Muhamma Kalo isn’t funny. And that’s the point!

Sure, people have been known to laugh on the rare occasion when watching one of his, if you’ll pardon my loose use of the word, movies, but that’s most likely the result of the ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ syndrome. If you don’t laugh while watching a movie that everyone knows is a comedy then people might think you’re an idiot. No one in his right mind wants to be an idiot, although wanting isn’t a requisite most of the time. To make it really clear, let me just come right out and say it: Muhamma Kalo’s doesn’t make comedies. He makes feel-good movies.

The point of a Muhamma Kalo’s movie isn’t to make you laugh. It is to make everything that happens after watching the movie seem an enjoyable, or in extreme cases, even hilarious experience. It is such a relief to finally be done with the damned thing that you can’t help but feel good about everything that happens in your life afterwards, subsequently invoking the sense of having seen a really feel-good movie.

With this groundbreaking revelation in hand I began to see Muhamma Kalo’s excruciatingly bad movies in a new light, in a manner of speaking. Everything began to make a sort of a nonsensical sense. The total lack of plot; the whiny voice; the idiotic facial, for lack of a better word, expressions; the supposedly hilarious getups; the gambolling around as an excuse for dancing, it’s all planned down to the last minute detail. A juxtaposition of absurdities designed towards one end only: to make the viewer feel as uncomfortable and creepy about watching the movie as getting French kissed by one’s own grandma is. Muhamma Kalo could very well be the next step in human evolution: an anthropoid so highly evolved that it can actually use its total lack of any skills or talent and turn a profit. His movies are designed to instil in the viewer a sense of glee by proving that there is at least one man left in the world worse off, less talented, less eloquent, dim-witted, ridiculous and ugly than the viewer. There are times when everyone needs to be reminded of that fact and undoubtedly it’s a nice feeling. It’s therapeutic. The fact that there is also really no difference between his character in the movies and the real man (except that in the movies he tries really hard to act and can temporarily fulfil his dreams of being with a real woman for a change) only makes it more endearing to the viewer.

So next time you survive one of his movies and wonder why you felt like you wanted to take a shower right after or flush your head down the toilet, know that whatever happens next, it can’t be any worse than the movie.

*This could explain the alarming number of suicides that have been reported in the Maldives recently. Someone should check up the facts and see whether they had been watching Muhamma Kalo movies before they decided to end it all.