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Reviews
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Views
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Date of last review
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4
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2180
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Tue April 8, 2008
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Recommended By
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Average Price
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Average Rating
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75% of reviewers
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$5.00
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4.3
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supersize
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Description:
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Starring Van Vicker, Nadia Buari and more..
Her hearts desire is to marry a young and single man who will give her all the attention and love she needs.
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thressa
Master Group
Registered: April 2004
Location: home
Posts: 5205
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Review Date: Wed July 4, 2007
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Would you recommend the product? No |
Price you paid?: Not Indicated
| Rating: 1
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Pros:
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Nothing
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Cons:
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The concept is too outdated
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I wasn't impressed at all.
Just pure nonsense.
Please enough of those two; they're beginning to wear me out.
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uyiuyi
l believe in myself
Registered: January 2004
Location: ikotun
Posts: 873
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Review Date: Wed July 25, 2007
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Price you paid?: Not Indicated
| Rating: 0
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are this 2 the only actors in ghana
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blackbutterfly
Master Group
Registered: May 2004
Location: USA
Posts: 4653
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Review Date: Fri August 10, 2007
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Price you paid?: Not Indicated
| Rating: 6
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Pros:
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Picture Quality
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Cons:
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Acting/Lighting/Set Design/Music/Script
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American Boy - Starring the ubiquitous Van Vicker, Nadia Buari and a host of other characters whose name never was entrenched in my mind to begin with so I can't be bothered to say it "escaped my mind."
Concept: Akua (Nadia Buari) has a pest of a rich suitor - Mr. Bob, an older man with a wife at home set on making her his second wife. She runs a "mama put" joint with her mom who has for a long time let her pretty much run things in the house. Akua is dead set against marrying this man for reasons she's doesn't really state but is quite obvious. The way she handles him is to embarass him and speak condescendingly towards him. Mr. Bob finally takes the hint but now without serving her and her mother a cold dish named vengeance. He proceeds to buy the plot of land that holds their canteen and employs a contractor to raze it down to the ground in order to build a mall.
Mr. Contractor who is still living at home with his nag of a mother has been given One week to find a wife but as circumstances would have it, Akua is pretty and in need. He "falls in love" with her, rents both a house and a restaurant for her to manage with her mom. She is appropriately enamoured and grateful until she bumps into Adusei (Van Vicker) who has taken up the challenge of punishing her for turning his friends' "toasting" into kindergarten drivel fit to be laughed at from the highest vocal decibel possible.
The boys pulls their money together to help him portray an American soldier on a "secret, terrorist flushing mission." She is so impressed that Mr. Contractor begins to look like a molue conductor to her.
She quickly gives him the boot in as much the same way as she did Mr. Bob with the help of the ever present "supportive" best friend. She is drawn in by the lure of glamour, "romance" and of course the forming this boy is doing in his American accent.
Once he's gotten her to a certain point where she's fallen, his friends refuse to sponsor the game any longer but this boy is a psychopath. He has decided that it is not enough to punish her but he is going to break her spirit and return her back to the humble roots from where she had once been redeemed. And he does it with aplomb.
THUMBS UP: Sound/Picture quality!
Production Hang Ups
I had major issues with the lighting in certain areas of the film. My Ghanaian people are beautiful, dark complexioned and hence very difficult to light. This might present a bit of a problem but none that cannot be over come. Mr. Bob in his car to talking to Akua in broadlight was almost just a big blob of darkness and even worse were the night shots.
The restaurant scene shot against white walls - a definite no-no. The set designer could have done well to put big paintings on the wall or better yet a beautifully embroidered a kente cloth or mud cloth to prevent all the numerous shadows.
And for a bustling restaurant, we kept seeing the same two customers in different clothes - they could have used more extras in those scenes. I don't know why we can always find a whole lot of women to gyrate in night clubs scenes but never enough to sit at a restaurant and eat like decent people.
The make up person should have used Dermablend to cover up Nadia's should blade tattoo because it did not work for the character when she was in the poor house. After she became a city lady, it worked but not before that because if you have money to get a tattoo then you should not be wearing those awful clothes and dishing watery stew for hungry construction workers.
Costume person did all my dark skinned brothers and sisters a disservice by putting them in Black clothes. First, a dark person in black is beautiful in real life, in film - they blend and look like one gigantic moving dark shadow. Secondly, it is HOT in Africa, black attracts heat and therefore you've got actors sweating like they are on a weight loss program. It added to the lighting difficulty. Putting Akua in a Red top and Pink skirt was just plain wrong! Also, putting Nadia is shoes that don't fit was a distraction. I could see her clearly struggling to walk in these shoes with five inches of empty space behind her heels. And the switch to city dressing was a tad too fast...it should have been developed slowly through the film - she went from gray turtle neck, 3/4 sleeve sweater (yikes!) to mini skirt, sequinned, sleeveless tops, wigs and too much makeup in one nanosecond. It is not believable.
The director had too many LONG scenes filled up with music and no dialogue. One too many cliched shopping scenes: one with Mr. Contractor and another with Captain Doctor Nelli (Adusei/Van Vicker). In the shopping scene with the latter, he played the entire track to Gregory Abbot's "Shake You Down" - I didn't fast forward here because I love the song but when he played Chris Burge's "Lady in Red" AND Simply Red's Holding Back The Years one after the other in the restaurant scene, I was so DONE. And two very long scenes showing Adusei/Van Vicker walking back and forth with wet cement on his head...okay, we got the six pack shot, enough! Rule of thumb, director: if it doesn't move the scene or story along then CUT IT. We got it, they are in a fancy restaurant having dinner...good, established...move on.
The scenes with Akua rejecting Mr. Bob was too repetitive. We got he was a pest the first two times but the rest were unnecessary especially if there was no change in dialogue which there was none.
Another point of note, the green Volkwagen buggy in front of Mr. Contractor's beautiful home NEVER MOVED. The director used the same one footage every time he shot the house - which always seems to be the required intro to any scene having to do with him and his mother...BUT its a different day each time so unless that car is rusted and sitting on cement blocks? MOVE IT. And they used that same car in another film, recognized the license plate...tsk!tsk!tsk!
The casting director miscasts Mr. Contractor and the woman playing his mother. They were too close in age to be believable and I don't care if she gave birth at 13.
And Mr. Van Vicker should have been told to keep the collar of his Polo shirt DOWN and the tennis cap worn to the side OFF because he wore the same styles in Beyonce. Please, let's try to differentiate between characters here even if they are from the same stock...his character in Beyonce was not even American, just a man who was supposedly "exposed" and his character in this film was a BRICK LAYER. TWO different people. The director should have told him to keep his personal preference off screen IF it doesn't serve the character.
Two scenes that could have been done better were: The first scene of discovery - Akua and Mr. Contractor are snuggling up with one another in what seems like the middle of nowhere at night and Mr. Bob drives up to them - TADA! Poorly executed! They might have well been card board cut outs....that over utilized shopping scene would have been better saved for this purpose if we are going to be killed softly with cliches. Or Mr. Bob could have driven by a Park and seen them having a lovely picnic or even if they were at least sitting in the front yard of his house and Mr. Bob stops by to give him blue prints for the mall...something but!
Another "Whoa, where did he come from moment" was where one of the boys shows up behind Akua out of nowhere and begins toasting her. It was just obvious, he stepped from the camera side and walked into frame. It was so obvious that it was a set up scene, no natural flow. It would have been better if there was a wide shot and he was stepping out of his gate to go somewhere, sees her and approaches OR she passes a busy area, ex. bus stop/night market...he breaks away to talk to her ...NADIA was horrendous in this scene. She was so concerned with playing up to the camera and being "fierce" that she forget to calculate for herself as an actress (1) what time of night am I coming home (2) I have on a mini skirt, high heels and a tight top (3) Is this guy going to rape me? She never looked up and down the street to see if there were people around in case of an attack. At least if she saw someone, she fit make mouth, do shakara and if not then proceed with caution. No initial surprise or fear. She talked as confidently as though she knows the guy wouldn't do anything because the director and crew are there. Terrible. She was so arrogant, rude - no caution whatsoever - that if I were that guy, I would slap the crap out of her - hey, they were in the middle of a dark street...who would come out?
Other things that made me raise my eyebrows were:
Why would Mr. Contractor still be living with his mommy at that age and he's supposedly "very, very rich" like Akua describes to her one and only friend?
And why didn't we see this one and only friend until she made good?
And how are we supposed to believe that Mr. Contractor is in love with her at first sight when he never once really looked at her except to tell her clear out so he can raze the canteen? Not one solitary moment of "I feel something here...."
Nadia has only one emotion - Anger. She didn't employ other ways to deal with her suitor or her mother. I thought she went a bit too far with throwing water on the man and threatening him with a stool because even though she didn't like him and he was a pest...he was still an older man with power in the community. And she had only one way to talk to her mom, disrespectfully...and I am not sayin' she shouldn't have but she could have varied her reactions to her mom with coaxing, teasing, frustration, calm resolve etc etc. She played one note through out the movie with everyone.
She didn't make the character likeable in anyway so that at the end of the movie, one feels no pity for her. She wasn't nice to her mom or Mr. Contractor and she thought she was using Adusei to move to better life and forget Mr. Bob. If she was even decent to her mom, it would and gone a long way to make her human.
Which soldier makes $50,000 a week? Was this to establish the girl was a mumu because it didn't work.
Note to the screen writer: Colin Powell has retired.
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Obariba
Enid Blyton's 3 Gollywogs
Registered: July 2004
Location: Cyprus
Posts: 13328
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Review Date: Tue April 8, 2008
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Price you paid?: $5.00
| Rating: 6
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Pros:
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Nice to see Nadia as a village girl
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Cons:
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A little drawn out
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Its was entertaining ...it was nice to hear the Ghanaian language spoken at the end ... I loved Van's transistion from bricklayer to soldier !!
Lesson to be learnt is Karma is a bitch !
All that glitters is not gold !!
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