Good Morning Karachi **
Dir:  Sabiha Sumar
Starring: Amna Ilyas, Saba Parvez, Beo Raana Zafar, Yasir Aqueel, Atta Yaqub, Savera Nadeem, Farhan Ali Agha, Khalid Malik

Based on Shandana Minhas’ novella Rafina, Good Morning Karachi tells the tale of Rafina, a young girl from Karachi well down on the socio-economic ladder who dreams of making it big in the fashion world. I haven’t read the source material but I really hope that it isn’t as vacuous and naïve as Sabiha Sumar’s adaptation.

The movie doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the issues it aims to tackle - life in the big city, the stratification of society, the figurative (and sometimes literal) turf war between the obscurantists and the liberals for the hearts and minds of the Pakistani people, the misogyny  (and hypocrisy) prevalent all around us, the dreams and desires for glamorous lifestyles engendered by the constant onslaught of certain visual imagery in our media,  the unrelenting desire to improve your economic standing.

Setting the movie against the turbulent backdrop of the latter half of 2007 when Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan may hope to provide a political context (and gravitas) to the events but it fails to do anything of the sort. In fact, it adds nothing to the movie except perhaps providing something familiar for (possible) international audiences.

I just happened to watch a tele-movie, Mehndi Laga Kar Rakhna, a couple of days before I saw Sabiha Sumar’s film and I thought that it was a delightful, deliberately over-the-top entertainer which did a much better job of subliminally tackling some of these same subjects. If you haven’t seen it I suggest you check it out. Similarly, Na Maloom Afraad caught the pulse of Karachi in a manner which Good Morning never even comes close to doing, not even visually.  The movie’s brevity (it is only about 90 minutes) is in a way both a pro and a con. It ensures that it does not overstay its welcome but it also does not allow the filmmakers to dig deeper or the characters to emerge as fully formed, three-dimensional people. Most of them never really go beyond being stereotypes. And the hurried climax with its over-simplified message never convinces.

Other little things also irk. Rafina’s choice of clothing when in her own neighbourhood often challenges the suspension of disbelief. There is an outright absurd choreographed dance sequence which strikes a discordant note in what is otherwise supposed to be a realistic movie (I’ve never been to a high end society do in which people have broken out into a Mollywood-style dance number - maybe I just don’t go out enough). I also didn’t buy the overuse of English - even in those scenes which do not involve the upper echelons of Karachi society - even though there is an in-movie explanation for the same.

All is not lost though. On the positive side the performances are all fine, with Amna Ilyas appropriately cast and looking great. Saba Parvez is her reliable self as Rafina’s mother and Beo Raana Zafar is quite good as her neighbour and prospective mother-in-law. Khalid Malik (of FM 89 fame) has an uproarious "catwalk" sequence. The other walk-on bits featuring many from Pakistan’s fashion world are also entertaining. Best of all, perhaps, is the fact that Good Morning is not a Pakistani version of director Madhur Bhandarkar’s clichéd Fashion, a supposed expose of the fashion industry (the only good thing about that was Kangana Ranaut’s crazed performance).

Cut to chase: A disappointment from the director of Khamosh Paani