Yahsi Bati - The Ottoman Cowboys (2009)

When I posted a review of A.R.O.G. a couple years ago I wrote that "Cem Yilmaz is financing his future good movie with a bad one". Judging by the pattern he followed until that day, I hoped that his next movie would a good one such as "Hokkabaz" or "Hersey Cok Güzel Olacak"... I was wrong.

Despite the wonderful visual effects, impeccable decor and costume, electrifying music, and so many other technical achievements worthy of praise, the movie is ultimately a bad one. The screenplay is too long and inflated with so many witless jokes. It is formulaic, repetitive and unoriginal. It is basically G.O.R.A. (or A.R.O.G.) in the wild west. Turkish comedy should outgrow fart-jokes, accent-abuse and overused unsubtle cross-culture references.

Even the decor has problems, since there is a nylon American flag in Sheriff Lloyd's office, and poker is played with plastic chips. After all that attention to detail, stuff like that ruins everything.

The fact that the movie is a lengthy commercial for a cola drink is also disturbing.

One clever thing Cem Yilmaz did with the script is to make it a story told by a shifty-eyed antique dealer. That saves him from a whole lot of criticism. Maybe if he had hired a professional screenplay doctor from Hollywood instead of a visual effects artist, the movie would be a much better one.

Fmovies: After watching this movie, you will find very hard to get rid of the image of two Ottomans in the Wild West- image that implants itself into your mind for a numerous of days after consuming the product. But despite all efforts, this movie (that was designed to be a hilarious comedy) does not live up to expectations. The main slow down and confusion is resulted by a strange and naive holes in the script during it's middle part. Almost useless scenes in the church that have no motive, intro or outro, confusing turn-overs (the sheriff is talking friendly to the lead guy in one of the scenes, the lead guy exits the scene, 10 seconds later the message-boy approaches the lead guy to tell him that the sheriff is challenging him to a death-match duel)makes you think that you missed the whole sequence in the middle. Turn-overs in the script, mainly designed just to produce the thin motive for the next (hopefully) comic scene are not very seldom. But the comic outcome IS seldom. Maybe the source of real trouble in this Sorak- Yılmaz collaboration is the gap between language-based, sitcom jokes (that are a mother- ground for Yilmaz comedy-style) and Sorak's effort to tell the story more cinematic,picture-wise. Final product is trapped somewhere in the middle - sitcom diluted with something supposed-to-be a serious cinema. Usage of more than one camera on some scenes sometimes result with a series of lined shots that have no readable sign - shots that are used just as a bridge to squeeze timing and jump over the long gaps in the scene. They look more like a "don't mind this" inserts, rather than a planned shots. Anyway, visually film looks good, story-wise looks bad, comedy-wise looks decent enough, but not hilarious - as one could expect from a master comedian Cem Yımaz definitely is.

Cem Yilmaz is a great comedian and has so many fans in Turkey. Whatever he does is acceptable and mostly laughable for many Turks. Therefore, he has got a good degree of creditability as well. I am thinking that 'Yahsi Bati' is the bast Cem Yilmaz movie only comparing to GORA and AROG. As I mentioned I also think that Cem Yilmaz is a clever and funny guy but I was horrified when I saw GORA as I did not like it a bit. I must admit that after three goes I could not watch the entire movie and gave up. With some of its flaws AROG was a good film but not great. I think Yahsi Bati made me laugh more than the other two. I also believe that classification for the film should be +15 as there are way too many jokes containing swear words ***the kinds that are not approved by Turkish people on the other hand used on daily base by many -)*** I appreciate Cem Yilmaz's efforts to make good films and I believe that all three movies were great when it comes to visual work especially Yahsi Bati was superb.

The movie is about two Ottoman officials trying to deliver a diamond from the Sultan to the American President. On the way they get robbed. Penniless they start a journey to find the diamond and go back to their country.

All cast was successful and there were not a single person I disliked in the cast. I also have the feeling that his new project will take us to China and after Yahsi Bati I have a feeling that I am looking forward to it.

Yahsi Bati - The Ottoman Cowboys fmovies. Having to wait until this feature came out on DVD was no disappointment, just be prepared to read subtitles - which is OK with me.

Being quite familiar with some of the idiosyncrasies of Turkish life from a foreigners view, I had a blast watching this collaborative production mix some of the finer points of the old west with the comedic lifestyle of a few Ottoman Turks making their first diplomatic trek to the Wild West.

As always, I enjoy the humor of Cem Yilmaz, but in order to really enjoy this film, one has to be quite familiar with the 'finer points' of living amongst our Turkish brethren – it's the little things that mean a lot.

'Chuck!' You know what I mean...