A review on Pakistani Rom-Com feature length film, Na Band, Na Baraati (2018). The Production House is Zashko Entertainment while its Distributor is Hum Films.
+ Crew
- Directed by Mahmood Akhtar
- Written by Harish Kumar Patel
- Cinematography by Shezad Pasha
- Edited by David Van
- Produced by Zain Farooqui
+ Note
Na Band, Na Baraati is Mikaal Zulfiqar first film with Shayan Khan Anzhelika Tahir and Komal Farooqui. It is also the directorial debut of veteran TV actor Mahmood Akhtar who is also playing an important role. The music is composed by Sahir Ali Bagga.
It revolves around two brothers and the struggle of a desi family settled abroad.
Na Band, Na Baraati’s shooting was completed in 2016. Almost the whole movie has been shot in Canada and was released on Eid-ul-Fitr.
+ Main Cast
- Mikaal Zulfiqar as Shahid
- Shayan Khan as Zahid
- Nayab Khan as Zoya
- Anzhelika Rublevska Tahir as Ayesha
- Ali Kazmi as Ustad the Mechanic
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+ Supporting Cast
- Qavi Khan as Shahid’s & Zahid’s Father
- Mahmood Akthar as Ayesha’s Father
- Azra Mohiuddin as Shahid’s & Zahid’s Mother
- Atiqa Odho as Zoya’s Mother
- Komal Farooqi as Shahid’s & Zahid’s sister
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+ Minor Cast
- Saram Jaffery as Super Mario / Bholu
- Kashif Ahmed as Co-mechanic
- Zuhair Jaffery as Guru
+ Plot
A typical Pakistani family living in Toronto, are dropped a bomb when they are told that one of their sons had a runaway marriage.
+ High Points
i – Mikaal Zulfiqar as Shahid was the real star of this film and gave a terrific performance with other few selective co-stars to bring in the interest level, to watch the film till the end.
ii – Surprisingly, Qavi Khan as Shahid’s & Zahid’s Father turned out to be very hilarious comic relief character. His repeated comic dialogue throughout the film was ‘Cheeni Khao! Jaan Banao!’ fun to listen to. I don’t remember that I ever enjoyed his performance so much (including of TV projects) as in this film. Other Honorable Mentions: Komal Farooqui, Saram Jaffery, Zuhair Jaffery and Kashif Ahmed.
iii – There were some few good laughs in the film such as Zahid tries to pick his glasses from the pavement and running into a gay with crashing sound of bowling pins.
iv – Beautiful costume designing, suited really well with the cast.
v – Fantastic job on the makeup & hair styling; made the stars look very glamour, beautiful on-screen.
vi – A couple of songs were nice with such singers Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, Shafqat Amanat Ali, Sahir Ali Bagga and Aima Baig.
+ Low Points
i – The new lead star, Shayan Khan needs to work really hard on his voice to sound like a mature person on-screen. I’m afraid that he sounded more like child, which gave a very bad impression to the audience and critics alike. To be in the ranks of ‘A’ graded stars, one has to his best efforts to be standing with them. There’s already fierce competition in the market and thus it is advised to work on your voice and acting classes.
Having good looks with a great muscular physique does not make one a great performer. These are secondary features which can be focused later, rather work on your primary features i.e. improvement in your acting and voice. Try to listen to yourself first by performing in front of the camera, see why people are criticizing your voice for.
Even today, if we bring Bollywood Super Star Shahrukh Khan in his place and change his voice as his, he (Shahrukh) too would be rejected by the market. Good voice does make a great difference, though being a great performer would come with practice and experience. By chance, only yesterday I randomly chose to watch a Bollywood film ‘Shamitabth’ (2015) where a homeless guy (Amitabh) lends his voice to new comer actor (Dhanush) to make a name for himself.
ii – The film editing needs great improvement. There were many scenes in the film where there should have been cut while the technique of using montage in a motion frame is really an old fashioned. It didn’t look good for the songs.
iii – Anzhelika Rublevska Tahir gave a wooden performance while Ali Kazmi’s performance was highly over acting. He tried very hard to make people laugh on his endless (boring) punch lines. Don’t get me wrong, I like Ali Kazmi’s acting in his TV and film projects previously but here he was misused.
As soon as Ayesha gets married, Ali’s character becomes useless for the audience to watch and bear him on-screen. The writer should have come up with new conflict in his story, to make his scenes interesting but were not so.
iv – The cinematography is below average and needs a lot of improvement.
v – The directorial debut by Mahmood Akthar was very weak indeed; the film would have been executed much differently and effectively if it was given to a well-known director.
vi – Most of the time, the actors would say their punch lines in such a way thinking perhaps the audience would surely laugh now. But all we would do is just stare at the screen for few more seconds before confirming “I’m sorry. Was that a punch line? Is he trying to make us laugh”?
vii – Need a good professional dance choreographer for their songs.
viii – The film dragged unnecessarily on and on. The two sons could have told everything to their parents regardless of their father’s warning as we all knew that he would eventually accept them but no! That didn’t happen and had to watch more than 2 hours of film.
ix – The BTS team should had work out on which scenes to keep, which ones to delete and how to make the film interesting in the phase of three acts.
x – Lips sync of Shayan Khan’s songs in comparison to his actual voice in the film didn’t suit at all.
xi – Poor acting by smaller role performers. They hardly had any expressions during their performance or scene sharing.
+ Overall
Na Band, Na Baraati fails to make its mark in the hearts of audience or critics alike with weak performances, lackluster of wittiness and many technical issues.
Rate: 1.75 out of 5 stars
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