D erek (Elba) has everything a man could hope for; a successful career, a beautiful wife, Sharon (Knowles), and a new baby, but his idyllic life is shattered when his colleague, Lisa (Larter), seduces him, sparking a torrid affair. When he tries to break it off, Lisa transforms into the ultimate woman scorned and begins stalking Derek and his family. Think of Obsessed as a poor man’s version of the classic Fatal Attraction.

T he surprise hit of the summer in North America, The Hangover is a madcap comedy from director Todd Phillips, whose funniest films, Road Trip and Old School, were not released locally because of censorship constraints. His latest flick follows four friends who head to Las Vegas for a raucous bachelor party on the strip. The morning after, three of them wake up to find a newborn baby and a tiger in their suite – but no trace of the groom. With no memory of what happened, the trio set out to find their friend before the impending wedding.

H arold Ramis, the man behind comedy smashes like Ghostbusters and Analyze This, delves into the world of ancient history for his latest film. Jack Black and Michael Cera play two primitive — and slow-witted — hunters who are banished from their village and find themselves embarking on an odyssey through antiquity. Although Year One doesn’t promise to rival classic historical farces like Mel Brooks’ History of the World, early reviews suggest it will be good for a laugh or two. Incidentally, Ramis also helmed the 2000 comedy Bedazzled, which will get the Egyptian treatment this month (see Local Releases).

T his family adventure features a group kids who discover a small, peace-loving alien in their attic. Naturally, he was followed to Earth by a band of villainous spacemen with plans to conquer the planet. The children must save their parents, and the rest of the world, in a film that is part E.T., part Small Soldiers.

M ost of the Egyptian films on release this summer prove one thing: the country has lots of good actors and actresses, but a serious shortage of quality screenplays. If not for some deft onscreen turns, several local blockbusters may have gone completely off the rails. For instance, veteran star Mahmoud Hemeida gave powerful performances in both Dokkan Shehata and Ehky Ya Shahrzad, masking numerous plot holes in both films.

In the violent saga Ibrahim El-Abyad, good camera work and superlative editing struggled to make up for a weak script by actor-turned-anchorman-turned-screenwriter Abbas Abouelhassan. Obviously inexperienced, he failed to create any tension between flaccid lead characters played by Ahmed El-Sakka, Mahmoud Abdel-Aziz and Heind Sabry.

One solution to the lackluster writing could be to find script doctors. In Hollywood, big studios hire good writers — sometimes credited, sometimes not — to fix the bugs in screenplays, and salvage films from the brink of bombdom.

Well, even if it’s not screen doctors, at least upcoming Egyptian releases are borrowing something from America: plotlines.

The first big release this month is the comedy 1000 Mabrouk (1,000 Congratulations), which teams popular star Ahmed Helmy with director Ahmed Nader Galal for the second time — they first collaborated in 2007 on Keddah Roda (That’s Fine). In 1000 Mabrouk, Helmy plays a stock exchange official who relives the same day over and over again. The daily déjà-vu is an Egyptian homage — to put it charitably — to Groundhog Day, the 1993 comedy starring Bill Murray. 1000 Mabrouk was delayed from its initial release date in late June because principal photography did not finish until the end of May. (That’s right, it takes less than a month to finalize the post-production of an Egyptian feature film.) 1000 Mabrouk is credited to brother duo Khaled and Mohamed Diab; the latter was the writer of successful films including El-Gezirah (The Island), starring Ahmed El-Sakka, and this summer’s Badal Faked (Replacement), starring Ahmed Ezz.

Meanwhile the new Ahmed Mekky vehicle, Teer Enta (Fly Away), follows the same plotline as Bedazzled, a US comedy from 2000 starring Elizabeth Hurley as a wish-granting she-devil and Brendan Fraser as a shy, lovelorn professor. In Teer Enta, Mekky tries to get the attention of his love interest Leila (Donya Samir Ghanem) by becoming a singer, a wealthy Arabian and an Upper Egyptian. Maged Elkidwany takes a turn as the supernatural temptress.

Both Groundhog Day and Bedazzled were directed by Harold Ramis — could an Egyptian Ghostbusters be on the horizon?  et