In Thori Life, Thori Zindagi (TLTZ), Shahood Alvi plays a father who is fed up with his children. But rather than get angry, he gets a heart attack. See, Sheikh Sahib (Alvi’s character’s name) is a pacifist with a good head on his shoulders, and a moral compass the always points to the right side of things. He is a self-made man — a successful TV producer we’re told, it’s a tough pill to swallow — and his wealth has spoiled his children to the point of ruin, after the passing away of their mother.

Sheikh’s eldest son Jimmy (Inayat Khan) — when he isn’t partying with pals who love him for his money — spends weeks with girls (yes, plural) in posh hotel rooms. The other son, Vicky (Muhammad Shah), after flunking high school, is in the habit of sharing drugs with the girls in his class. Sheikh Sahib’s daughter Zoya (Kisha Siddique) craves expensive shoes (she already owns a stupefying collection of footwear we’re told, but not shown) attends expensive parties and — most importantly — is eager to piss dear daddy by intending to marry a slimy, money-grubbing 40-year-old guy played by Saleem Sheikh (she is merely 22, by the way).

The brood’s bad behaviour finally gets to Sheikh Sahib and after the aforementioned heart attack — which, by the way, doesn’t emotionally affect his kids (they were contemplating turning off his heartbeat monitor in the ICU since it interferred with their cell phone signals) — their life undergoes a drastic change. Their uber-expensive house is sieged by the Federal Bureau of Revenue (FBR) and the family, with help from the kids’ friend, Shaan (Imad), a good-natured, smart, lower-middle class boy, the family flees Islamabad to Sheikh Sahib’s old home in Lahore. The place is dingy, in a bad neighborhood and the family barely have a few thousand rupees at hand to survive. Happy with how things have turned out, Sheikh Sahib forces his kids to learn what life is all about, the hard way.

The idea of TLTZ is old. I’m sure you’ve seen black-and-white films with the same premise from Lollywood and Bollywood. They, however, were better in every imaginable way.

While the basic idea is old and borrowed from earlier films, they were much better in every way imaginable than Thori Life, Thori Zindagi

TLTZ is a wearisome, uninspired mess of a movie. Technically poor — the film has exposure issues between shots (the interiors are under-exposed; the exteriors over-exposed), there is no colour correction (the colour temperature of shots shift radically between cuts), the score abruptly ramps up out of the blue when a scene begins…I could go on and on.

The film reminds me of the late 1990s and early 2000s Lollywood films. There is even a song that harks back to the old days of Lollywood (a remake of Madam Noor Jehan’s Akh larri badon badi from Banarsi Thagg).

The thing is, I wasn’t missing the late ’90s Lollywood.

With Alvi being the only worthwhile, experienced actor on set — everyone else ranges from amateur to incompetent — there is very little in TLTZ that would hold anyone’s attention.

Thori Life Thori Zindagi is written and directed by Khalid Kidwai, creative direction is by Khursheed Rizvi (what does this credit entail to anyways?) with lyrics and music by Naeem Wazir and cinematography by Joseph Williams. The film is released by Shera Films and mostly features bad behaviour by rich kids

Published in Dawn, ICON, March 20th, 2022