By Maliha Rehman
It’s like a fairytale. A girl dreams of being rich. She runs away from home in order to avoid an unwanted engagement. She ends up bumping into a sensible, no-nonsense hero, who is also a very successful businessman. Fate keeps masterminding accidental meet-ups between the two. She doesn’t trust him, he is irritated by her. In a series of ridiculous situations, she annoys him, throws him into a pool, holds him at gunpoint and basically causes him constant mental distress.
You know that they’re going to end up falling in love.
One must commend Fairytale for spinning a story that is slightly unique rather than falling into a typical Ramzan drama rut. As is the case with all Ramzan dramas, both our hero and heroine have endearing families by their side. There’s a grandmother, cousins, aunts and uncles, a grumpy father and a mother obsessed with getting her son married. There’s plenty of the usual family banter in the story. It used to be an engaging concept but it has fast gotten repetitive.
Fortunately, there’s more to the story. The interactions between the male and female leads, Umeed and Farjad, played by Sehar Khan and Hamza Sohail, are reminiscent of old Haseena Moin plays, where the heroine spoke her mind and made silly mistakes while the hero glared, fretted and eventually got smitten.
Having said this, Haseena Moin’s lead heroines tended to be much less annoying than the haphazard Umeed. Sehar Khan acts extremely well. Her comic timing is spot-on and she is great at coming up with a range of silly expressions. However, Umeed’s character would have had benefitted by a bit of toning down. There are times when she comes off as selfish, other times when she’s belligerent rather than comical and I wonder if some of these personality flaws are going to get ironed out towards the end of the drama. There are also plenty of times when Umeed just makes you smile – those have been some of the best scenes in Fairytale so far.
Hamza Sohail proved himself to be an impressive actor in past projects – Raqeeb Se and Badshah Begum, namely – and he is very good as the serious, good-at-heart, easily annoyed Farjad. I would love to see this young actor in many more diverse roles. He definitely has a strong screen presence and Fairytale proves that he’s also adept at comedy.
The romance between Sameer – Adnan Raza Mir – and Haya, played by the very pretty Aena Khan, is supposed to be the sub-plot to the main story. Sadly, it is utterly lukewarm. So far, there have been no scenes that hint at chemistry between the two characters. Developed intelligently, this side-story could have added to the entertainment value. Instead, it is forgettable.
Fortunately, the main peg – the slowly brewing romance between Farjad and Umeed – is interesting enough to keep you hooked.
The ensemble cast performs well; particularly Saleem Sheikh, Adnan Raza Mir, Aena Khan, Salma Hasan and Hina Rizvi. The very talented Ali Safina shines in the character of the flirtatious, opportunistic game show host – when does Ali Safina not do justice to his roles? Saman Ansari, on the other hand, puts out a very weak performance as Farjad’s mother. This is a pity, considering that she has plenty of scenes throughout the drama.
A few weak scenes cannot undermine the whimsical, feel-good story which forms the backbone of Fairytale. It’s romantic. It’s hilarious. It features some very fine performances. Most importantly, it has some of the tropes of the usual Ramzan drama but it also has some new twists to offer. It’s a refreshing change.
What do you think?