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Pa'amaim Buskila (Hebrew) [Buskila Twins]

These kind of silly, comedy of errors, films with stereotypical gay characters must have been quite common in non-western countries back in 80s and 90s. So you have to keep in mind, the time period, when we watch movies like this. A story  of comedy of errors, between twin brothers, between Israel and France, started off well and actually was quite funny till about half point, but then it just got weird and too campy for my taste.

Twin brothers Papi and Max have not met each other for 20 years. Papi is a gay, over the top fashion designer in Paris with a young boyfriend and Max is in Israel, running a plumbing company with his wife. One day a lawyer shows up and finds Papi and tells him that an uncle has left them an inheritance of 20 million dollars each with the condition that both brothers need to be married and have three biological children of their own. Papi flies to Israel to meet his brother, who is a player, who has 2 kids so far and a very suspicious wife. He convinces him that he will somehow find a girl to marry, but can his brother do the 'job' and getting the girl pregnant, which means he will have to act gay and what not. This is where the silliness goes full throttle. We see the process of finding a girl, a Russian prostate looking for stability, Max's wife going full on doubting her husband's fidelity and Papi's boyfriend finding his military life difficult and getting it on with another model to prove a point to Papi. Anyway, by the end and all the confusion, the condition is fulfilled and they both get the money.

I am guessing the film is loosely inspired by the play 'Comedy of errors', because it very much feels so. The story and narrative has been adjusted as per the local sensibilities. To be hoist, I quite enjoyed the first half, the process of elimination to find the girls, the wife always finding the same cab driver when she goes looking for her husband Max, the comic touches and over the tp gay stereotypes; it was all campy and fun till the time it wasn't. I wish at some point there was some sort of redemption for both characters but there just wasn't, and may be that was the point of the film. Their plan was to entertain the audience. Its me trying to find that something extra in a film, which didn't exist here. The lead actor playing the twin roles, of a straight man, a gay man and a straight man pretending to be gay man is fantastic. He portrays all three scenarios with confidence and ease and is extremely good. All the other actors do exactly what they had been signed up for. This is not a great film by any means, but if you are looking for something silly, meaningless and just want a decent laugh, you can go into your archives and look for this film. (4/10)

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