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.

Leisurely experience for me with a matinee at a huge cineplex with five other viewers. I'm sure I'd give it half this score if I'd seen The Matrix. For a Pakistani film, it held my interest quite well. As I was debating a bathroom run, the film helpfully announced a ten minute intermission, complete with a countdown clock on screen. More films should do this. Anything over two hours, given today's attention spans.

Amar (Usman Mukhtar) is an interesting character, a genius professor who also sees apparitions and is the last in a long line of UAs. It's cool to see him branch off into reluctant superhero mode. Guru (Manzar Sehbai) is like a Pakistani Morpheus or Yoda. This gentle and wise sould had a pretty cool vibe that I bought. I kept thinking there may be a romantic subplot with Amar and his fetching daughter, but that never came to pass. The modern portion of the film was like a free travel pass to an obscure country. Half the dialogue was conveniently English. It was nice not having to read subtitles for the entire time. The time was well spent, even though I had no idea what I was about to watch.

What a revival of our blend of Harry Potter and Marvel, kudos for that. Definitely a lot of research has been done. Took us back to "Daastan Amir Hamza" and "Tilsam hoshruba" our childhood classics ( if not to 1896 persian/urdu version).

I like following areas: 1. Good story line 2. Visuals 3. Blending with modern time But un necessary comedy is tried to be injected. Fights also not to global standards.

Better if it is splitted into 24 min 11 episodes S#01, than a movie (with boring first hour). In start Amir Hamza darbar, ayyars army, afrasyab etc can be shown. Still excellent work and effort.

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.

It's the story that has been done again and again although felt abit of Dr strange vibes with a mix of Harry Potter something like that but it's a soild film anyone looking for amazing story telling don't expect it here however if your the type that loves super hero origin movies give a shot although Umro Ayyar is based on a hundred year old novel but the name is only taken from the book and the rest is bran new story set in mondren times. I liked it but it felt like I had something like this before so I hope this sells well but it's up to the consumers. P.s best performance in the film are Faran Tahir, Hamza Ali Abbasi and Manzar Sehbai.