Word: omar
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...Take my advice: there's money in muck." Omar (Gordon Warnecke), a young Pakistani on the dole in London, takes these words to heart as he aspires to the comfortable status of his assimilated (and sleazy) uncle and pursues his own commercial dream of "a laundrette the size of the Ritz." With the assistance of his gay lover, Johnny (Daniel Day Lewis), an ersatz National Front hoodlum, Omar dreams up "Powders," a designer cleaning service replete with neon signs and high-style furnishings--even a fish tank...
This enterprise is more troublesome than it might seem, however, because the setting is Maggie Thatcher's Britain. The plot moves along as Omar encounters the racist tensions and youthful frustrations of the fair Queen's city, which threaten to rise above the surface and destroy the young Pakistani's sweet dreams...
...beginning of the film, the characters' prospects are less than rosy: Omar, having failed two sets of exams, does household chores all day for his widowed father, and Johnny, living in an abandoned building, has to keep one step ahead of some burly evictors. But Omar's Uncle Nasser (Saeed Jaffrey) comes to the rescue and agrees to employ his nephew, eventually allowing him to manage the eponymous laundrette, at that point nothing more than an unprofitable hangout for skinheads and other local riffraff...
KUREISHI AND DIRECTOR Frears cleverly handle the ensuing development both of the cleaning service and the gay love affair, often adding sweet and ridiculous touches. On opening day, Johnny and Omar make love in the plush back room while customers form a comically eager queue for the bannered and streamered laundrette...
...Hanif Kureishi, 29, the film's author, says he originally planned a three- or four- hour work with a Godfather sprawl, but settled for 93 minutes and (pounds) 600,000 from Britain's Channel 4. The pinch shows, and so does the pluck. Kureishi's story shifts moods, and Omar changes motivations (Candide to Sammy Glick), in an eyewink. Stephen Frears' direction can be lyrical and clumsy by turns; it can soar or trip over its headlong ambitiousness. The splendid cast is urged toward caricature, then plays through it, with Seth magnificent as a mandarin socialist in decay...