My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) More at IMDb Pro »

"My Beautiful Launderette" is a mixed bag of touching and powerful moments, somewhat boring lulls in the story, and moral ambiguity. It's mostly about Omar and his life as a Pakistani in Britain; a great deal of it is about families, their bonds, and their conflicts; significant parts of it are about Omar's relationship with Johnny, which means that the film is dealing with a lot of material. For a film with so many aspects, it's too short.

Some will argue that, seeing as it's not the main focus of the film, Omar and Johnny's relationship had a fitting amount of time devoted to it, but their relationship raises so many questions that I found myself wishing it was more central. What exactly was their friendship like when they were young? It's implied that they've had a romantic relationship before the film starts, but why did that end up on hiatus? Aside from being at a certain place in a certain time, what other factors contribute to Johnny's acceptance of Omar, later prejudice, and final love and devotion? The ambiguity is distracting as opposed to lending itself to interpretation.

The dynamics of Omar's family - his businessman uncle, his sick father who was a journalist in Pakistan but now is poor and unrenowned, his ambitious cousin who wants to develop her own life and sees Omar as a means to that end - are well-acted and realistic. In fact, the acting is good all around, which helps in the moments where it seems the plot is taking its time moving from one development to the other, without much substance in between action.

"My Beautiful Launderette" is definitely worth seeing, at least once if not twice, but, having made the decision to put the protagonist in a tumultuous and intriguing romance, the filmmakers should have spent more time on that aspect.