Is Pakistani cinema confused about genre?

In Wrong No, aspiring actor Sallu (Danish Taimoor) locks horn with his father, Haji Abba (Javed Sheikh), who thinks he's a good-for-nothing loafer. Haji Abba gives Sallu an ultimatum: find a job within a month or get ready to join the family trade, that is, being a butcher. Meanwhile, Sallu's marriage is also arranged against his will to Laila (Sohai Ali Abro), whom he despises despite her devotion to him.

(Spoiler alert) All this is too much to take for Sallu, so he hatches a plan to swap places with his lookalike, Shehreyar, a rich businessman’s grandson, whose impending arrival from Australia was broadcast on local TV. When Shehreyar lands at the Karachi airport, he is mistaken for an absconding Sallu by Haji Abba, who drags him back home and keeps him under lock and key.

Meanwhile, Sallu, who is mistaken to be Shehreyar by his grandfather’s company secretary Haya (Janita Asma), is escorted to a swanky hotel suite. He starts to enjoy the good life, leaving Shehreyar to languish in his family’s grip. How's that for a switcheroo?

Shehreyar isn’t only Sallu’s ticket out of misery. Three goons – Danish Nawaz, Nadeem Jaffri and Atif Shah – want to kidnap him for ransom to help repay a hefty loan taken from a mafia don (Shafqat Cheema). The trio soon discover that the don is out to kidnap Shehreyar for his own gain.

Haji Abba meant business — Publicity photo

On the surface, this plot is harmless. The fortuity of an identical non-twin may not exactly be a novel plot device, but the dynamics of Haji Abba’s household are a refreshing departure from the typical extremes of TV families: the polished sheen of posh families cloistered in Defence bungalows and their abject, poverty-stricken counterparts in Kharadar.

The qassai khandaan has its stock characters like the patriarchal Javed Sheikh and his weepy wife and also novel characters like the silly sister-in-law and constipated nephew. Mistaken identity and khandaani eccentricities make for the kind of benign fun characteristic of family-friendly entertainment.

Also read: 7 things you didn't know about Wrong No

Is Wrong No a family film or a guy flick?

But in the plot’s fleshing out, the film veers in another direction. Packaged in this family comedy-drama are all the elements of a guy flick.

There are cartoonish action sequences: Our hero Danish Taimoor has literal abs of steel, flies in his action stunts and throws punches that land with a satisfying 'dhishk'.

There's pee jokes, potty jokes – low-brow body humour centred around constipation, circumcision and more, er, unmentionable acts. The jokes occasionally veer towards R-rated territory like pimping or picking up prostitutes. These jokes had the guys in the cinema let out peals of laughter.

They guffawed some more when the three buffoons enacted a comedy of errors as they scrambled to repay the don.

In family films you expect wholesome entertainment, appropriate for all audiences. You also expect them to not be sexist. Wrong No didn't meet these expectations.

That was the buddy film sub-plot, and there are a couple of (maybe) hot chicks: The women in the world of 'Wrong No' accessorise the plot just right — the crying mother for a dose of melodrama, the silly sister-in-law for humourous effect, and two love-interests, Sohai and Janita, who try their best to be desi-sexy.

All of this is okay and inoffensive so long as Wrong No is regarded as a guy flick. When the filmmaker insists that it's a film you watch with your kids, it causes concern.

Also read: First person: The unusual thespian

Female characters like Laila merely accessorise the plot of Wrong No — Publicity photo

Family films shouldn't be gender-balanced, but Wrong No isn't

When you identify a film as family-oriented, you set certain expectations. Family films aren't meant to be boring, but you expect wholesome entertainment, appropriate for all audiences. You also expect them to not be sexist. Wrong No didn't meet these expectations. This is particularly troubling, considering the film's decent box office performance.

Given director Yasir Nawaz and producer Nida Yasir's household name status after long careers in TV, and the cast's popularity as TV actors, it's no surprise that families are going to watch their big screen effort. But Wrong No producers have done their family-filled audience a disservice with its advertising.

Wrong No features no working women except Haya, who chaperones the chief's grandson. Having her lug around some files doesn't make her the working woman that young girls can identify with.

In a film that delivers almost no discernible message other than 'fathers should listen to their sons more often' — that too, very thinly — and offers two and half hours of pure levity — which is its core strength — lots of less than desirable notions about women that run rampant in society are reinforced.

On one occasion, Sallu tells a besotted Laila, "Women shouldn't open their mouths if their faces aren't pretty, if their accents aren't nice or if their figures aren't good." Not only does the dialogue make no sense but it sends out the notion that men can dictate when women speak and that it's a woman's job to tailor her self to a man's pleasing.

There are no working women except the scatter-brained Haya, whose job responsibilities include chaperoning the chief's grandson to lunch and the movies. Are women in the professional environment capable of no more than doing some more caretaking? Having her lug around some files doesn't make her the working woman that young girls can identify with.

Haya is a caricature of a working woman — Publicity photo

The list of gripes could go on, but the crux of the matter is this:

Sidelined women are almost salient features in guy flicks — and to oppose that occurrence is to rail against the genre itself — but their presence in family films, which should be gender-balanced, should not be accepted.

To sum up

There are all kinds of audiences, so there should be all kinds of films: testosterone-fuelled Shaan-starrers, like Waar and Yalghaar, romantic dramas that TV viewers seem to be suckers for, like Bin Roye and Dekh Magar Pyaar Se, and comedy films like Karachi Se Lahore and Wrong No. But the family-friendly label needs to be applied with greater caution.

We can't say a film is fun for the whole family, just for greater ticket sales. And we can't justify the label by saying Bollywood is worse. We're trying to carve our own identity as cinema, and the world is watching. The Guardian is doubting the capabilities of 'Urdu cinema' based on Bin Roye's shallow plot. It does the industry as a whole a disservice when one film makes a bad choice.