Amira & Sam plays like your typical romantic comedy. It starts off with an unlikely pairing of star crossed lovers, Amira (Dina Shihabi) and Sam (Martin Starr). Both were on the same side of the war, except Amira blames the American soldiers for the death of her brother. Amira, whose uncle Bassam (Laith Nakli) is keeping her illegally in the country, gets in trouble with the law for selling bootleg copies of dvds. The police knows where she lives so she is forced to stay with Sam until her uncle comes back from his work trip. Meanwhile, Sam is finding it hard adjusting to civilian life, recently getting fired from his job. Luckily, his hedge fund managing cousin Charlie (Paul Wesley) offers him a job as a special accounts manager. Those special accounts of course being for companies whose heads were also war veterans. He reluctantly agrees because of the amount of money he would make, but his true passion lies in comedy. After bonding and realize they are both facing the same pressures and expectations, Amira and Sam begin falling in love, and then of course something comes up that threatens all of it.
It’s charming, it’s cute, it’s mild integration of humor throughout the film makes it at its basest level, entertaining. Writer/Director Sean Mullin shows us his ambition in this film by trying to cover a wide range of topics such as life after war, the lingering prejudice of the war, overcoming cross cultural differences, dirty financial dealings, compromising integrity and honor for financial gain, and a few others. Among all that, there is also an attempt to put together a believable love story, which gets swallowed whole. Imagine an average doorway. Each idea and concept would be it’s own person. Now imagine each person tries to get through the door way at the same time. There is no way they are getting through. Although it is highly ambitious, the over-saturation of ideas makes it unable to fully realize a single one, including the central love story.
What does work really well is the chemistry between Dina Shihabi and Martin Starr. Starr’s chivalrous, disciplined demeanor matches exactly that of a person who has served in the military, but the near-irreverent bit of humor does seem a little out of character. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the humor, and wished there was more com in this rom-com, but it felt less like the character Sam, and more like the personality of Starr. Shihabi played the perfect counterpart to Starr’s soldier. She is strong-willed, passionate, with a hard exterior, but with a kind interior. Had the focus been on the development of the their relationship, this film would have been more successful in the romantic aspect. Instead it’s treated as just something that happens in between social and political commentaries.
Amira & Sam is a socio-political film masquerading as a romantic comedy. Its ambition is its downfall, trying to squeeze in as many relevant issues and ideas while also trying to develop a romance. It instead half explores every topic, making it ultimately ineffective on every front. The main thing you’ll leave thinking isn’t the state of the word, or what a great relationship Amira and Sam have, but how attractive Martin Starr is in this film.
RATING: ★★★★★(5/10 stars)
In theaters and VOD (Amazon & iTunes)
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