Love 2000s romcoms? Lebanese director Elie Semaan loves them more, I’d wager.
His 2024 film, the sleeper hit Honeymoonish, was a Gulf spin on How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days – following a man and a woman pretending to fall in love until they accidentally really do.
Groom and Two Brides, his latest Kuwait-set Netflix original that’s out today, is once again mining that era’s reliable rewatchables – this time jumping from the oeuvre of Kate Hudson to Jennifer Lopez.
Here, Kuwait-based Lebanese actress Laila Abdallah plays Yasmine, a wedding planner hired to plan the wedding of a childhood friend whom her father secretly promised she would one day marry. She doesn’t know it’s his wedding, of course.
We see all this from the perspective of Adam, played by Kuwaiti actor Abdullah Boushehri. From his eyes, he’s struggling to keep his head above water – finding himself accidentally engaged to two women, imagining what life might be like with either of them while desperately trying to keep them from finding out about one another.
If you enjoyed Honeymoonish, you’ll likely find even more to enjoy here. Semaan, together with writers Ramy Ali and Eiad Saleh, have honed their craft – bringing in more laughs and more heart.
In the Gulf region, the romantic comedy is largely a new genre. That may be why an accomplished actor such as Boushehri, for example, doesn’t seem entirely comfortable here, with some of the gravitas he brings to his more dramatic roles diminished by the material. It’s an entirely different skill set, after all. Matthew McConaughey may make it look easy, but it’s not.
With this kind of thing, you learn as you go. And part of that growth process is not just making the story work on its own – it’s finding out how to make the formula jive in an entirely different culture, with its own sense of humour, value system and storytelling tropes.
Part of what made Honeymoonish so interesting to watch was the way it failed to match one culture to another. At times, its jokes would have felt more at home in a 1990s Farrelly brothers movie than in a Gulf comedy, where racy humour is basically unheard of.
In Groom and Two Brides, however, it feels as though more thought has been given to the cultural context in which it was made. Boundaries are pushed, to be sure, but the jokes feel more locally authentic, the situations more respectful of regional norms. It feels less like a movie that could have taken place anywhere and more a story that could only have come from the Gulf.
Part of the push-and-pull is because these films are made in conjunction with Netflix, which has at times struggled to calibrate its regional output to local audiences while also creating content with global appeal. But with each project, lessons have clearly been learnt – and you can see many of them applied here.
In the case of Groom and Two Brides, even if you’re discovering the film on the other side of the world, you’re likely to be comforted by the tropes, eased by its zippy watchability, and amused by committed performances from actors clearly having the time of their lives with material far outside their comfort zones. You’ll learn something about the culture, too, while perhaps seeing similarities with your own – proof again that cultural exchange often happens most effectively through the seemingly frivolous.
All in all, both films are successful enough at what they set out to do. Cliches are cliches, after all, because cliches work.
But where Honeymoonish flirted too much with imitation, Groom and Two Brides finds its own rhythm – proof that the Gulf romcom might just be ready for its close-up.
