Amjay’s Udhabaani ‘raises’ horror to new low

Mohamed Headset morphs into a turtle, a crab, a fridge and then finally into Ahmed Rushdie in order to review Amjay’s “Udhabaani”

You can’t help but admire a man like Amjay: the man is determination and bullheadedness personified. Not deterred in the least after creating some, if not all, of the worst and financially unsuccessful “movies” ever made in Maldives, he continues to bombard the Maldivian audiences with cinematic awfulness on an epic scale in the frail hope of eventually creating something that people might find some entertainment value in. You’d think the law of averages should have kicked in some time ago, right?

However his latest ‘hit’ movie “Udhabaani” – with a truly memorable tagline that goes ‘sometimes it says evil will raise from beneath” – is reported to have had more houseful shows than all of his other movies combined. Of course, houseful shows are a matter of perception. Some people might argue that the amount of free tickets distributed in order to assure the movie’s ‘houseful’ status was nothing short of diabolical and that they had no idea what they were getting into, but why quibble over such trivial PR stunts eh.

Now brace yourself. If you’ve seen the movie then you know how mind-numbingly boring and long it is. Well, this review is going to be twice as bad. You’ve been warned so don’t read any further.

Oh, you’re still with me? Right then. Let’s do this.

The movie is loosely based on a book based even more loosely on the old “Rannamaari” folktales about a horny-as-hell sea-monster that craves virgins – the reasons for which have left many a historian thoroughly baffled but most experts now agree it was probably because the monster was… well, we’ll get to that later. Visionary that he is, Amjay took into consideration the current worldwide recession when adapting the book to film and narrowed the scope – downsizing, you could say – of the movie to the story of a single (no, not that single) and extremely prude virgin, and then added a twist just to make things more interesting. More on the twist later.

As I’ve noted in earlier reviews, Amjay doesn’t hold much truck with character introductions or leaving the song and dance sequences for later. He begins the movie by dropping you smack dab into the middle of the first of many song and dance numbers that infest the movie throughout without reason or rhyme. The first song is actually good news for those who came in late as they are given the chance to find their seats without losing even a second of the movie. And just in case anyone forgot the name of the movie, the opening song – and every other song after that – rather conspicuously and irreverently inserts the word “Udhabaani” into almost every verse, just to make sure the audience never forgets the sad fact that they are watching “Udhabaani” and not some other lame Amjay movie, which, truth be told, was an assumption that many in the audience might quite honestly have made. It kind of reminded me of the title sequence in ‘Spy Hard’ where Weird Al Yankovic sings “In case you came in late, the name of this movie is Spy Hard! You’re watching Spy HAAAARD!”.

Fair warning to those who have seen the movie (I feel for you, my brothers and sisters) and those who haven’t (you lucky dogs, you) there are spoilers abound from this point on, and I promise you this: you’re better off reading about the spoils here and being bored out of your mind then having your senses tortured while inside a dark theatre and sitting in a very uncomfortable chair.

So after the audience has finally had a chance to find their seats after groping about in the dark and stuff, the two love birds from the song, Eyoopee and Amira, plop down on the beach under the stars and start chatting up some romance, filling in some background story. That’s when the sea-monster first makes an appearance… and disappearance. Scaring the crap out of the girl, I might add, and leaving the audience howling with laughter.

You have to hand it to Amjay (otherwise he would probably sit on you until you did) but the man has done his homework on his target audience. The average Maldivian cinemagoer considers being able to cry on cue the only talent worthy of note in an actor and are quite willing to pay good money to go and see every frikkin’ person cry great big torrents of rivers continuously for over three hours. They just can’t have enough of it. They thrive on tears. And so Amjay delivers what the audience needs… in bucketfuls. After sparing the audience the waterworks for the first half an hour so of the movie, Amira finally gets the chance to really let go. Honestly, at some points I think there were hundreds of salmons trying to leap upriver from the waterfalls that flowed from her eyes. I’m not kidding: she cries her head off and bawls enough to irrigate the Sahara in EVERY frikkin’ scene! It’s a wonder why the sea-monster didn’t beat her into pulp.

Here’s the movie in a nutshell: Horny sea-monster can’t get laid. Ever! Boohoo!

And here’s the movie in a coconut-shell: Horny sea-monster sees lovebirds singing and dancing near beach one night. Gets a hard on and a jealous bone, not particularly in that order. Kills or eats Amira’s father who probably thought he was about to land ‘the big one to end all big ones’ but ended up being served as sea-monster salad instead. Horny sea-monster changes shape to look like Amira’s Dad, minus Dad’s habits and communication skills. Despite that, horny sea-monster completely fools simple wife and begins to stalk ‘daughter’ Amira. Ugh… creepazoid. Tries to break up lovebirds as ‘Dad’. Foiled! Changes tactics and tries to seduce Amira by changing shape to look like Eyoopee. Curses! Foiled again due to lack of adequate seduction skills. Human seduction possibly very different from seducing ugly sea-monstress. Amira takes offence at poor seduction techniques shown by horny sea-monster masquerading as Eyoopee and breaks up with real Eyoopee. Entire island in uproar over doppelganger’s lack of bedroom manners and real Eyoopee is shunned. Eyoopee’s best friend for some reason figures out the doppelganger angle and stalks horny sea-monster when it goes for his grisly nightly snack in the sea. The secret is out. Enter Fanditha man. Sea-monster goes haywire. Many die. And movie ends.

At first, the movie might seem silly. And it is, but at first it just seems that way. Later you know for sure.

For example, you might wonder why the sea-monster doesn’t vent his pent up sexual frustrations on the Mom. She looks about the same age as Daughter Amira after all. Ah but you forget. The Mom lacks the virginity card which Amira has in spades. And why take the form of the Dad if all the sea-monster wanted to do was bump uglies with Amira? It would have been easier to just take the form of Eyoopee from the very beginning; that way at least the poor sea-monster wouldn’t need to learn Dad’s routines – like fishing, picking coconuts, and remembering which sarong to wear on Friday – just to keep up the masquerade. Not very bright, your average horny sea-monster.

And now for the twist. Once you see the twist, things make a bit more sense. Not much, but more than before. You see, it’s not really Amira the sea-monster is after. It’s Eyoopee! Maybe the sea-monster was gay or maybe it was female, you can’t really tell with all that stupid makeup on, but it was one hell of a twist. Take that, Shyamalan!

Now I know what you’re going to say, but hear me out. It gets better. Consider the victims. First to go is the Dad. By putting Dad out of the picture the monster paves the way to break up Eyoopee and Amira. Next is Eyoopee’s best friend, who spends waaaay too much time with Eyoopee. Then it’s the Fanditha-man, who sadly was totally oblivious to Eyoopee’s subtle advances and hints about ‘sleeping alone’ but the horny sea-monster saw through it. Others died too but they were just scare tactics to get Amira to run away from Eyoopee. Ultimately the horny sea-monster’s plans fail and he decides to face off with his rival once and for all in an ultimate love showdown to win Eyoopee’s love.

So he turns into a crab! Yeah, that’s right. Ooookay so that didn’t help but it sure was hilarious.

Next he turns into a turtle! No good, too damn slow! A lamp post! Not helpful at all. A fire hydrant! A pumpkin! A bazooka! A turnip! A dirty shoe! A sea-monster! (No wait, that was Dad) Then into god-knows-what and finally into Eyoopee. Phew! The guys in charge of providing the really crappy visual effects really outdid themselves here: it was worse than Fathis Handhuvaru. By then even Amira, who is apparently not the sharpest pencil in the box, realizes the truth. She runs to the real Eyoopee to ask for forgiveness and walks head first into another surprise ending: the end of the movie. It’s awesome! For those brave people who have managed to read this far, I salute you.