The Fakenapping 2025 Movie Review
When things are bad you can turn to your family for help, even if it is basic encouragement or shove in the right direction. If, however, you’ve got yourself into such a pickle that they refuse to help, that is when you resort to desperate measures. But desperate doesn’t have to mean stupid.
Unsuccessful entrepreneur Sattam (Mohammed Aldokhei) is 250,000 riyal in debt to loan shark Abu Atiq (Saeed Al-Owairan). Given ten days or else, Sattam sells his car but spend the money on his daughter instead. To raise the big money, Sattam visits his textiles factor owner father Sulaiman (Abdulaziz Al-Sokayreen) asking for a loan, but is rejected, claiming things are tight for him too.
Known for his parsimony, Sattam thinks his father is holding out on him. With his friend Yacob (Yazeed Almajyul), Sattam tries to stage a fake kidnapping but knowing his father will never pay a ransom for Sattam, he has a better idea – why not kidnap Sulaiman instead, and share the money to pay off his debts.
I’ve only seen two films from Saudi Arabia, both from female director Haifaa Al-Mansour and both were great. This ensemble comedy is directed by a man, Amine Lakhnech, and on the evidence of The Fakenapping alone, maybe they should leave the filmmaking to the women. Or maybe it is a product of female oppression and the need to challenge the patriarchy vs. the freedom men have to do whatever they want that is the difference.
Since my knowledge of Saudi cinema is limited – information on this film alone is scant – Lakhnech is a new name to me yet IMDb shows a man with a taste for artistic flare This begs the question how he ended up making this flaccid, mainstream bating romp with hopes of breaking Saudi comedy on the international front. It’s no secret Saudi Arabia doesn’t have the best public image at the moment so people may not be willing to give them the chance.
And this is just one problem facing The Fakenapping – the humour feels far to localised to have much reach beyond Saudi borders, and the dialogue either doesn’t translate well or is clunkily written, with much of the interplay often seemingly going nowhere. Being unable to pinpoint the problem makes it harder to divine where the jokes are.
The tone is comic from the start, with Sattam in a supermarket wearing a bird’s head for a dare from his daughter which is promising. On the drive home Sattam is chased by Abu Atiq’s SUV in a decent enough scene to set up the money issues at the heart of the plot. Sattam is a single parent living with his mother hand to mouth, while Sulaiman enjoys luxury.
Established quickly is how Sattam is irresponsible, coasting through life on dreams and good will of others to pull him out of a hole. Pampering his daughter is no justification for his costly antics when he could simply buckle down and earn an honest wage. The usual cheeky rogue characteristic to make the audience root for Sattam is absent, whilst the unique twist of kidnapping his own father somehow makes it worse.
His brother Abadi (Khaled Hweijan) and wife Hiyam (Abrar Faisal) are expecting a baby, hoping for a son Sulaiman will dote on and make his heir since he has shut his own sons out. Along with Sulaiman’s soon to retire assistant Amjad (Mohamad Almugtaba) whose farewell bonus is suddenly unaffordable, Sulaiman’s money hoarding has a wide reaching affect.
Furthering the chaos, the kidnappers mistakenly ask for 300 MILLION riyal instead of 300,000, increasing the difficulty in rasing the funds. However, an important discovery changes the entire moral complexity of the situation, shifting priorities and forcing the family to look at themselves and reassess their relationships. In the meantime, the fake kidnappers start to take their roles a little too seriously.
Distilling the key elements of the story as above makes it sound fun, which it actually is in principle. Writers Abdulaziz Alessa and Ahmed Amer show an understanding of how to craft a farcical comedy that spirals out of control to a car crash finale, whilst imparting an important message. On paper it sound fantastic, in execution it’s a different matter for reasons given earlier, along with apparent little understanding of pathos or irony.
Not recognised for their sense of humour means Saudi Arabia’s idea of comedy will be arcane to us foreigners, thus this comes across as an attempt to emulate the Hollywood style of madcap comedy. If this is the case, it feels uninspired and unoriginal to our eyes; I never once laughed. Also, as a rich nation with a blasé attitude towards money, the conceit of money isn’t everything just doesn’t ring true at all.
But I’m making assumptions based on my own ignorance. From the sparse information I could find, Mohammed Aldokhei is a top Saudi comedian which is on display as Sattam, with strong support from the rest of the cast in albeit tropey roles. Admittedly, the sight of men running around in keffiyeh and women in burkhas doesn’t lend itself to comedy outside of satire, so this is a unique optic at least.
Lakhnech’s direction is competent and commensurate to the comedy expectations, but rarely gets to do much to give it any sense of cultural individuality as found in his award winning short True Story; then again he is Tunisian and being paid Netflix money so maybe he is doing as he is told, referring back to courting international markets. The camerawork and overall presentation is high quality and the opening and closing actions scenes are rather fun.
Maybe The Fakenapping will be the first Saudi Arabian comedy to reach a wider audience and I’m either missing something or being too cynical towards its authenticity as a crowd pleasing film. All I know is something got lost in translation whilst its potential is squandered for the sake of mass appeal.
