São Paulo – Saudi animated comedy “Masameer: The Movie,” recently made available on Netflix, tells the story of Dana, a young engineer and programmer who lives in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. A robots and artificial intelligence aficionada who struggles with a problem at work (no spoilers), she embarks on a journey to do good in the world through robotics.
Meanwhile, Saad, Saltooh and Kalb – a trio of friends one of whom is a humanoid dog – are in trouble after being evicted and set out to prove their worth to themselves and society by becoming crime-fighting superheroes.
The four of them meet at a hero convention, and after flunking the test to join the Hero Society, they decide to form their own group, the “Extraordinary Gorooms.”
Dana is a young woman who works, drives around and lives with some degree of freedom in a conservative country. In one scene during the convention, a “feminist” superhero shows up whose power is to be able to “not admit speaking with men” except for the “superhero of house chores,” who’s a friend of hers. One of the three friends who join Dana claims he “doesn’t speak with girls,” and after she comes up with the idea of creating their own superhero group, he steals the idea and claims it as her own.
According to Middle East news site The National, the movie’s first 30 minutes challenge social issues in an innovative, unique way, but after that the plot gets lost, drags on, and becomes outdated by a decade.
The animation is well-done, with 3D photography and cartoon-style characters with a somewhat sophisticated look. The fact that there’s a young female who’s a robotics engineer is in itself a big step, considering the overall context of a film made in Saudi Arabia, even in 2020.
The 110-minute feature film is based on a popular Middle Eastern cartoon miniseries created by Faisal Al-Amer and Malik Nejerem – who directed this latest outing. The original miniseries is available on YouTube. The movie was released in January at Middle East movie theaters, and it premiered on Netflix on March 19.
The movie is a production from Myrkott. In Brazil, it features original audio in Arabic and subtitles in Brazilian Portuguese, English, French, Italian, and German.
This is not the first Saudi production to air on Netflix. February saw the streaming platform release Six Windows in the Desert, a six-episode miniseries by Saudi directors portraying the nuances of Arab culture.
This could be a great way for Arab culture lovers to spend time during their quarantine. Stay home!
Watch the trailer:
Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
