Did Netflix's romcom Honeymoonish fail to appease its Arab audience?

When the trailer for the Arab romcom Honeymoonish popped up on my Netflix homepage I was instantly intrigued.

Set in Kuwait, it stars Noor Ghandour, Mahmood Boushehri, Ghorour and Amal Mohammed — actors who are permanent fixtures in Kuwaiti musalsalat or TV dramas — and has been directed by Lebanese filmmaker Elie El Semaan, written by Egyptian screenwriter and director Eiad Saleh and produced by Eagle Films, which is based in Dubai. The April release showed a lot of potential so I sat down to find out what it was all about. 

A rom missing the com 

Nour Ghandour plays an outgoing fitness instructor and party animal Noor, who has her heart broken when boyfriend Youssef tells her he is going to Beirut for a work trip, only for an Instagram post to reveal he has married his cousin and her old classmate, Aisha.

Mahmoud Boushehri plays Hamad, the conservative son of a rich Kuwaiti businessman. His father tells him he has had enough of his refusal to get married and gives him an ultimatum: Hamad has only a month to get married and produce a sonogram of an upcoming baby, or he will lose his place in his father’s company and inheritance.

To get back at her now ex-boyfriend, Noor wants to prove she can get married in a week. Hence, she enlists the help of her BFF Amal, played by American-Kuwaiti mega influencer, Ascia Al Faraj.

It turns out Amal’s husband Wa’el is best friends with Hamad, who is also on the lookout for not just a wife, but any wife. Cue some very convenient matchmaking as Noor and Hamad are thrust into each other’s arms by this married couple.

But Noor and Hamad are polar opposites.

Noor is hellbent on making Youssef see what he is missing out on and ensures that her honeymoon is not only in the same city as Youssef’s but in the same hotel. She recruits Amal for some major stalker behaviour; via location tags, on Aisha’s social media posts, Amal can tell Noor where they are staying and what nightclub they frequent.

Both Hamad and Noor are completely oblivious to the real reasons behind marrying each other and begin this sham marriage believing they have made a mistake; however, with time, feelings of course grow.

Up until now, the storyline isn’t inherently unique when it comes to romcoms but now is where the storyline gets interesting; a spanner is put in the works when Hamad’s maternal aunt calls him in a panic and tells him to not have sex with Noor, there’s a chance she is his milk sister because his late mother used to take care of Noor when she was a baby.

In Islam, if you breastfeed another woman’s baby five or more times, that child becomes your children’s milk siblings and this means they can’t marry each other. It is not unusual in the Gulf for women to still do this. As a viewer, you feel Hamad’s anxiety as his aunt and Noor’s mother (who turn out to be friends) go back and forth trying to find out how many times his late mother breastfed Noor.

Honeymoonish thrives in the romance part of the romcom; being a ‘Kuwaiti’ and Gulf-produced film, they can only go so far with physical displays of affection between Noor and Hamad. They hold hands, she lays her head on his shoulder; there is a magical scene where water-phobic Noor dances in a swimming pool with Hamad. It’s enough to convey the growing tenderness between them, without shocking Gulf viewers.

But it is the com in the romcom that is slightly lacking.

Ghandour, whose breakout role was in the 2019 Kuwaiti drama Juman, succeeds in playing the grieving ex and her character is light-hearted, flirty and fun. It is standard Ghandour for those who are familiar with her acting. But it is Boushehri whose performance really shines. He is often typecast as the trouble-making, drug-dealing bad boy so it was refreshing to see him play a non-threatening character.

Ghandour’s character is clumsy, constantly falling over, but the slapstick comedy doesn’t produce laughs. There were potential moments for comedy; for example, when Hamad lies about his stash of Viagra and tells Noor they are painkillers. She takes one for a migraine and spends the night exercising barefoot in the hotel garden. But again, while it is entertaining, it didn’t induce any laughter.

If anything, it was Hamad’s aunt, played by Kuwaiti actress Ghorour, and Noor’s mother, played by Iranian-Kuwaiti actress Amal Mahmoud, who provided comedic relief.

Too Westernised? 

There was also something else that irritated me throughout the film. I felt as if the filmmakers had not made this film with Kuwaiti or Gulf viewers in mind. The storyline of Youssef having to marry his cousin and of Noor possibly being Hamad’s milk sister felt authentically Kuwaiti or Khaleeji, but little else did. I think the most Kuwaiti thing about the film was the song heb al sa’ad playing at Noor and Hamad’s wedding.

The clubbing and the drinking felt completely out of line with Kuwaiti customs and traditions; having lived my late teens and the entire decade of my 20s in the Gulf, I know that Kuwaiti viewers would find this distasteful. While the film is most certainly an art form that can be used to challenge societal norms, and I am sure some Kuwaiti couples let their hair down abroad, it just felt like the filmmakers were trying to appease Western Netflix viewers by making the film more ‘Western.’

I spoke to a couple of Kuwaiti friends to make sure I wasn’t out of touch with Kuwaiti society and being a killjoy, but they agreed with me. One friend, whose husband is a Kuwaiti filmmaker, told me, “I’ve heard from a few people that they actually don’t think the film is ‘Kuwaiti.’ It just happens to have actors who use a Kuwaiti accent. And I think that one of the reasons that people have not watched it is because they don’t think it’s authentic or speaks to a local experience. My husband is a filmmaker and he even couldn’t muster up the energy to watch it.”

My friend, fellow writer and Kuwaiti journalist Yousef Al Shammari, who like me is in his thirties, told me, “Much of Kuwaiti society revolves around protecting reputation while living a secret life. Personal expression or lifestyles that don't correspond with that conservatism, are naturally going to be problematic and unwelcome.”

He added, “We are a deeply neurotic society and we know how to put on a compounded set of masks. But that doesn't dismiss flimsy attempts at art especially if it's produced by a Western entity like Netflix. So much of expression is sought in less constricted environments, but then again, it often means we have to go to the West and have their modalities influence us.”

I think about how in recent years, young Saudi filmmakers have made numerous successful Netflix films or series such as Barakah and Barakah, Basma and Crashing Eid and what makes them different to Honeymoonish. It is that they have managed to portray the complexity of being young modern Saudis today while being authentically Saudi.

And where Honeymoonish fails is that it feels like a project in appealing to the West.

Do we have to abandon our culture to be successful on Netflix? Saudi filmmakers have proven you don’t.

Yousra Samir Imran is a British Egyptian writer and author based in Yorkshire. She is the author of Hijab and Red Lipstick, published by Hashtag Press

Follow her on X: @UNDERYOURABAYA