Umro Ayyar - A New Beginning

What a treat to watch our very own fantasy sci-fi movie with our grand children. Based on the Harry Potter like series of our times, it happily connected with the child inside us.. A well blended concoction.of East and West cinema with a practical approach; as in its language that was clear and crisp with a casual mixture of English and urdu. I could feel the engrossment in the stillness and enjoyment in the loud laughes of the children of all ages watching the movie . That felt good and instilled pride in our emerging cinema as we need to reclaim the story telling embedded in our culture , smartly . It indeed pushed the boundarys of our very own cinematic ventures as world class technology use , creativity and hardwork reflected in every take.

The smallest summary I can give for this movie is: "Marvel's Dr. Strange meets Assassin's Creed Brotherhood", though I don't know how many would get the reference.

Pros:

• Nice CGI.

• Good action scenes.

• Decent acting by all, especially Guru, Laqqa & Hamza.

• Good storyline.

• No stupid dance scenes or tedious romance triangles.

Cons:

• CGI, though good, can be improved, like allowing the demon to close his mouth.

• Too many talkative boring bits which can be trimmed.

• Majority of the humorous bits were horribly misplaced. This was my biggest concern. A serious scene completely ruined by a stupid joke!

Overall, a good movie suitable for the whole family.

I went to watch this movie on the first of Eid which gets quite busy. Also convinced my friends to go along with me hoping that the movie would be good enough.

I won't say I had hopes of watching something of "maula jatt" level as I had already noticed some shortcomings in the trailer but the movie was a complete flop. There was no proper character development, the acting was so bad by most of the cast ( had some exceptions like GURU, LAQQA and hamza ali abbasi) and there was no point to it.

The fight sequences ughhh... the first fight scene in the park was so badly choreographed that even small youtubers make better sequences than that.

I am student at NUST university where some of the scenes were shot and that added to my excitement but it left me very disappointed.

I am giving it a 4 because of the vfx effects and the effort they put on for visuals, but i hope they focus more on the story if there are any plans of a sequel.

An exiciting movie to watch. Good storyline with engaging twist s. Storyline is not a no brainer rather links up well with world beyond time and space something that is believable to absorb.

Vfx work is superb. Pakistan cinema needs more on this genre to expand the horizons. All actors performed well. Special mention of Versatile Sanam Saeed, Genuis of Manzar Sebai sb and Farhan Tahir's believable performance. Hamza Ali Abbasi was brilliant too and wish we could have seen him more in the movie.

I would really want that this series should expand further as Umro Ayyar has a rich history and he's a super hero who has been untapped on this massive scale. Kudos to the director and producer of this movie.

A solid 8/10.

A must watch.

Pakistan's first attempt at making a superhero movie based on Tilism-e-Hoshruba an Urdu recension of a persian classic the Hamzanama.

In comparison to the best of Marvel or DC I would have rated the movie 5 which is pretty good for a first try. I went for a 7 because of the same reason and the fact that great effort has been observed from the part of the producers and all other people involved in the film and not to even mention the beautiful CGIs. Never thought we would get to see something of this quality in Pakistani cinema but here we are. One step at a time.

It should be emphasised that much more could have been done to make the movie better. Especially in the story writing, story telling and direction department. Characters were unnecessarily expressive at times especially when it came to being angry. Too many borrowed Clichy's, we need more novel ideas than were in this film. Also there was too much English being spoken, should definitely minus that part in the sequel, It is embarrassing how instead of keeping things traditional and culturally relevant there were unnecessary and cringy attempts to westernize things. Aim your things at the regular people and they will come. Instead of bikes could have used a flying carpet. Instead of English could have used Persian, it would have made more sense. Costume design seemed too middle eastern and Mediterranean at times with little basis in south Asian culture and tradition. Usman Mukhtar's character in his fathers suit looked like some ancient roman warrior without the helmets.

Acting by Usman Mukhtar, Hamza Ali Abbasi and Farhan Tahir was the best from the lot but still requires more attention. It was over done at times and underwhelming in places. Also I think, Hamza Ali Abassi's character should be more involved in the sequel if any. He did well. His character seemed much more interesting than Usman Mukhtars.

Nevertheless I would recommend everyone to go and watch this movie, its quite entertaining and unique in the sense that you will never see a movie that is about a superhero but also contains jinns, Ifrits and demons and is rooted in cultural traditional beliefs of the people of that land. Its our duty to help the producers recover the amount put into making this film with aesthetically pleasing visual and CGI also to ensure that they can come back stronger the next time with a larger budget and significant improvements hopefully.