By Ali Baylay
A DEVINE TOUCH PRODUCTION. Starring: John Dumelo, Tonto Dikeh, Jibola Dabo, Ashley Nwosu; Production Manager: Emeka Ojiafor; Story/Screenplay: Chisom Juliet Okereke; Editor: Okiki David; Continuity: Winning Team; Executive Producers: Kingsley Okereke, Emeka Igwemba; Director: Theodore Anyanji. 130 mins. c2009
Even though My Fantasy is a movie based on phantasma, you’ll ask yourself where on earth such power in one person exists as in Sir Rufus, when he could imprison another citizen at will. I guess this will only happen in Nollywood or Gollywood where conventional statutory law does not apply. But it’s all good to see strange bed fellows like Gollywood and Nollywood, team together on a project such as My Fantasy. Nollywwod has a trait of getting the job done in a record time before the sun sets, and Gollywood with a Knack for quality, to a large extent in shots.
In a curious way, My Fantasy reminds me of Indecent Proposal in which Robert Redford offered Woody Harrison one million dollars for a time with his wife, Demi Moore. Having a tight time and running out of it to redeem his architectural masterpiece (house) from foreclosure, he has to give in. My Fantasy is a movie in which Sir Rufus, makes such an indecent proposal to Joe. Joe works for Sir Rufus’s night club, and happens to get caught on camera crossing a shady deal. He’s called to answer to the accusation in front of Sir Rufus and found guilty of the crime. As a punishment, he’s locked up in a cellar at the club.
When Joe’s daughter would trace her father back to the club, she found herself in the presence of Sir Rufus, who demands her love in return for the money her father stole from him. Being pushed against the wall and have no other option, Joe agrees to give his daughter over to Sir Rufus as a pawn.
In a memorable film moment, Joe hammers his reason home to the daughter by disclosing to her that he’s not her real father. Amidst tears, the daughter has no choice but to succumb to the most gruesome sexual ordeal Nollywood has ever brought to our living rooms.
I have a problem with this film, if I could be honest. In theory of film, the premise of My Fantasy is to present a formidable villain who needs a formidable hero to break his wings. Sir Rufus is presented as a formidable villain, who can lock fellow citizens in his private den without recourse, and in fact no one dares cross the barricade of securities that man his private empire. By virtue of his position as a Goliath, the script needed a stone throwing David. But instead of David, Micheal is trashed into oblivion and never heard or seen again until we see him in a drunken stupor making it out with another woman.
Even as Joe could make one last ditch effort to get his daughter back from Sir Rufus, he’s warded off like a fly as he lamely borrows from Arnold in the Terminator, and scurries off from the scene, “I’ll be back”. He never gets back, but goes into oblivion too. I guess he’s in the imaginary world of My Fantasy, drowning in both brandy and his guilty conscience.
We wouldn’t have taken Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet seriously hadn’t they decided to die in each other’s arm for the sake of love. In most modern films, evil is always punished. We the audience [OB1] demand retribution and redemption: that those in difficulty shall be freed; those lost shall eventually find the way out, that philandering woman will note that a love of a husband and to raise a family shall bring the union a full life. Here in My Fantasy, there’s no stake, and an educated audience can neither fully sympathize with Rosie, nor Michael, nor Joe, for they show no steadfastness in their characters.
By American standard of rating movies, My Fantasy would have passed more as an x-rated flick than a film an African parent could watch with his children. The phallic desire expressed in the character of Sir Rufus: the roar in bed like a lion, and especially in the last scene where Rosie completely succumbs to his kinky, brutal and sexual desire and both start getting naked, is certainly not meant for the average African family. However, at curtain down, I went in the shower, got lost in my own fantasy and took a long hot bath.
its nice bcoz i gain a lot of knowledge for stars its good job