Parey Hut Love’s trailer is chock full of rich visuals, peppy dance numbers, beautiful sets and celebrity cameos. However, the story at the film’s heart feels extremely familiar, though it starts out very promising.
The trailer begins with screen legend Nadeem asking Sheheryar Munawar if he’s that famous TV drama actor. He replies in the affirmative way and then the trailer takes off. Sheheryar makes fun of Pakistan’s obsession with marriage, as is evident with our drama serials constantly serving up clichéd and repetitive marriage based television shows.
An entire montage of weddings and television shoots is dotted with cameos by Meera, Mahira Khan, and Sonya Jahan. However, things slow down when Maya Ali makes an appearance, predictably freezing Sheheryar’s character in his tracks.
Maya Ali enunciates poetry as well as she can and enchants Sheheryar with a prize winning smile. They lay in each other’s arms, twirl around and laugh. However, the trailer quickly divulges in to cliché territory, showing us a plot we’ve seen a thousand times before, over and over. Maya introduces Sheheryar to her fiancé and then it all predictably turns serious.
Parey Hut Love was said to be loosely inspired by “Four Weddings and a Funeral”. However, it does seem to have the typical masala elements that are signatures of Bollywood. It’s just not Pakistani cinema in my opinion.
Sure, Pakistani cinema has had its share of love stories with misunderstandings in its history; the most famous being Armaan. However, Parey Hut Love seems like a carbon copy of every Karan Johar flick.
The trailer ends with Nadeem proclaiming “Mauqa milta nahi betey mauqa cheenna parta hai.”, and with a surprising cameo by Fawad Khan at the end who says, “Kaamiyaabi ka usool hai logon ko maza karao, unko jeena mat sikhao.”
While I hope these dialogues are indicative of twists in the story and though I hope that the entire trailer is a bait and switch and the film turns out to be completely different and off the beaten path, it doesn’t seem like it will offer anything new or any surprises for Pakistani cinema.
Things to appreciate about the trailer include the visuals and the mastery behind the camera. A Pakistani film may have never looked this beautiful. Parey Hut Love has brought an aesthetic forward that hasn’t been seen for a long time. Not since Jalaibee have I been blown away by the colours and the sheer beauty on display on screen. If “The Legend of Maula Jatt” had blown away audiences with its sheer darkness and intensity, Parey Hut Love‘s trailer does the same with it’s finesse.
“Parey Hut Love” releases in cinemas worldwide this Eid-ul-Azha.
