Truly Dreadful Film

Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

How sad is this?

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Omaret Yakobean is one of the best Egyptian movies in the last decade, it's a story of the stories of the people living in the large legendary historian building of Yakobean. Yakobean building was built by Hagoub Yakobean the greatest of the Armenians in Egypt in 1937, since then, different kinds and cultures of people lived in that building, Princes and Princesses, bashas, Rich and Tycons, foreigners, Officers of revolution, Ordinary people and even Jews. The story of the movie is in the first half of the 90's of the 20th century where different kinds of people who have different cultures and sorts of life, The main characters in the movie were: - Zaki El Dessouki (Adel Emam): A desperate old man descended from a former basha and a Tycon. now in the age of 65, he's living a lonely life only to enjoy himself with women and girls of different types, finally he found the true love with Bothayna (Hend Sabry) and suffering from the annoying of his half mad sister Dawlat (Essad Youniss) ..Haj Azzam (Nour El Seriff): An old tycoon started from zero, wanted to play a politic role but was lost and surrendered in the middle of corruption that rules the game of politics ..Taha (Mohamed Emam): a low level young man failed to achieve his dream to become a police officer, instead he joined a radical cell who doesn't really understood the true meaning of the great religion of Islam and became a terrorist and finally died while trying to kill the police officer who once tortured him when he was captured and jailed ..Bothayna (Hend Sabry): a poor girl who was forced to become a whore serving the ugliest kinds of people to have the money to live and finally found Zaki El Dissouki who gave her the power and the true meaning of love and finally married him - Hatem Rasheed (Khaled El Sawy): A great chief editor in the journal d'Egypt magazine who is living his life as a desperate homosexual and trying to find a guy to satisfy his sick needs and tends ..A strange mix of characters which were perfectly managed by a strong story and a great and promising director (Marawan Hamed) Really a worthy movie to be seen as it reflects a hard criticism to some corrupted situations of politics, sexual lives and terrorism *** Lo'ay

Egypt has the same problems as in any other country. The difference with this film is that these problems are laid out bare.This may be unique in Egyptian cinema.Although the film is very good, the director tried too hard to include so much! Every subplot in this movie could have been turned into a film.The only negative thing is the portrayal of the homosexual. Though shown to be kind and sensitive (unlike most characters in the film), it is implied that he had been forced into being gay. Why can't we just expect that some people are just naturally gay!

"The Yaboubian Building" reminded me of those over-heated Spanish soap operas that air nightly on Telemundo. The sweep and size of the film (not to mention its length) may fool people into thinking it's a more important picture than it actually is, when really it's not much more than one big soapy melodrama that manages to stay mostly entertaining over the course of its three hours.There's a lot going on in this film, and you may find you have your work cut for you just following the basics of the plot. I suspect much more of the film would have made sense to me had I known more about Egyptian culture. As it is, there are a lot of terms and situations in the film that probably didn't have their full desired effect. Of course, it's tough as an American, and therefore one used to experiencing art that throws critical darts at my country's beliefs and institutions, to fully understand how controversial this film (and the book on which it is based) has been in Egypt. By all accounts, the frank candour about corrupt government, homosexuality and the prostitution of Egyptian citizens (of all types and at all levels of society) have been greeted with quite an uproar in this film's country of origin. It's a noble effort on the part of the film-makers, and I can understand them wanting to pack in as much punch as they can, but the film tries to do too much, and the plot feels like several different agendas unsuccessfully unified into a coherent whole.Much of "The Yacoubian Building" is no less ham-fisted than your typical Hollywood film, not the least of which are the scenes that explain outright the film's central metaphor (the Yacoubian building itself as a representation of Egyptian society). But much of it works quite well too, especially the acting, which is pretty good across the board, the crisp pacing and the driving musical score.A big bold movie that bites off more than it can chew but provides a solid few hours of entertainment nonetheless.Grade: B+

Yes indeed,i expected this movie to be better than this..it's a good movie but it's not supposed to be just good,it's supposed to be excellent because it's portraying a wonderful book and with a gorgeous huge cast. The book was better in relating characters and analyzing them,i know that the book has a better space to do that and that the movie had a limited time,although it was 3 hours long,but still the movie gave much on screen space to some stories that weren't that deep like Adel Emam's story and little time to more deep and important ones like terrorism in Mohamed Emam's story and Gayness in Khaled El Sawy's story. The casting and acting were very good except for Tamer Abd El Men'em who was very annoying and not fit for his role! Also Adel Emam was not that good although he finally played a role that fits his age. New people in the movie like Bassem Samra{i guess that's his name!} and Mohamed Emam were great,especially the first. Best acting was by Khaled El Sawy who played Hatem Rasheed,the gay journalist..he was perfect and deep unlike Youssif Sha'ban in "Hamam El Malatili",who was very naive and stupid!! i'd give Khaled El Sawy a 10/10. Also Is'ad Youniss,although her role was small,whenever she appeared on screen,she just entertained me. Khaled Saleh was gorgeous as usual as Kamal El Shaz.. i mean Kamal El "Fuly" lol The Montage was absolutely terrible! that's all i can say about it. I think it's a very good Egyptian movie that deals with the real Egyptian society and it must be seen. Finally,i applause for Ali Abo Shady for not cutting anything out of the movie.