Review: ‘Heer Da Hero’ brings on laughter and entertainment

– GLOSS ETC

Androon Lahore and its winding alleys lure you in. And then, a madcap, loud-mouthed ensemble of characters keep you fixated there. Ramzan dramas have started suffering from cookie-cutter formats with stories and characters that seem too forced. ‘Heer Da Hero’, produced by Abdullah Kadwani and Asad Qureshi of 7^th Sky Entertainment and airing on Geo TV, is an exception.

The hilarity doesn’t stop, the dialogues are perpetually littered with punch-lines and everyone in this daily drama is a little crazy and very enticing.

Forming the backbone of the story are two families, closely related to each other, living in the same mohalla and competing against each other for political supremacy. The scions of the ‘Butt’ family and the ‘Jutt’ family hate each other and their families join in on the taunting, teasing and rivalry.

Over at the Jutt household, Heer Jutt is the vivacious leading lady. She is an avid Tiktoker, wears her heart on her sleeve, is very opinionated and speaks the most abysmal English – something that her entire household is very proud of. At the Butt’s, Hero Butt is an angry young man who roams about the neighborhood picking fights, being a smart alec and occasionally having a tussle with Heer. A fair amount of Hero’s time at home is also spent consoling his father who lost the last election to the Jutt clan and has been in misery ever since.

The comic timing of the cast is the brilliant and it helps that they have a very good script to work with. Amar Khan, also playing the lead role of Heer, has written the script , creating a motley crew of effervescent characters, scripting hilarious situations and dialogues in Punjabi and intelligently adding important social messages within parts of the story Amar’s a fine actress but she’s also got a bright career ahead of her in writing comic scripts.

There’s Hero’s father who goes about smashing televisions and hates all things ‘kaleji’, there’s Heer’s uncle who is desperate to get married but whose weddings keep getting cancelled; there’s the cousin from Canada who has come to visit with the Jutts and who Hero and his gang of hoodlums ridicule; there’s Heer’s obsession to ‘create content’ even when there is a neighborhood fight going on. And then, there is Heer’s love for speaking very bad English.

It’s all so funny and so different from the family Ramzan comedies that are getting repetitive very, very fast.

Imran Ashraf makes a great Hero Butt, yo-yoing from the neighborhood bad boy to the son who cares deeply about his father. The actor’s last most memorable role was playing Billoo in last year’s Ramzan comedy Chaudhry and Sons. With Heer da Hero, Imran once again proves that feel-good comedies are his forte. Straight-faced, he delivers some great slapstick moments.

Amar Khan is also in her element as the very dramatic Heer, exemplifying that there is so much to her than the usual sobby roles that come her way in TV dramas. The ensemble cast is extensive and boasts a slew of very interesting names: Waseem Abbas, Usman Peerzada, Afzal Khan Rambo, Kashif Mehmood and Rahim Pardesi, among others. The cousin from Canada, enacted by Rahim Pardesi, is particularly a highlight. And Kashif Mehmood and Afzal Khan Rambo, as Heer’s father and uncle respectively, are hilarious.

The backdrop of old Lahore adds a unique twist to the story. In fact, should the drama have been set in a regular neighborhood, perhaps Heer Da Hero wouldn’t have seemed so different from the other Ramzan fare on TV. The ageing walls, narrow paths, clustered rooftops and even the Badshahi Mosque in the background make the drama stand out.

Incidentally, Imran Ashraf and Amar Khan’s last project together, the movie Dum Mastam which was also written by Amar, was similarly based in androon Lahore. Looking at the teasers of Heer Da Hero, some may have had wondered if the drama was just going to regurgitate some of the elements that were in the movie. Certainly, there is something familiar about Hero’s fake bravado and Heer’s vivacity. The similarities stop there. One week in, the storyline of Heer Da Hero is very different from the heavily emotional, nuanced Dum Mastam.

One hopes that this remains the case. Ramzan dramas are faced with the challenging task of running for 30 consecutive days. Scriptwriters and directors often run out of plot twists and start relying on repetition. The TV audience is quite accustomed to this and, based on past Ramzan hits, is even quite understanding about it. But perhaps Heer Da Hero could be different and not become humdrum around the 18^th or the 19^th episode?