A Miracle Film Presents: Mr Bob (Psalm Ajeteio), Abi Adatsi (Monica), Morris Owusu (Charles), Nadia Buari (Akua), Van Vicker (Abusei), Emma Dickson (Mama Jane). Story, Samuel Nyamekye; Screenplay, Fred Asante Kotoko; Director, Samuel Nyamekye.
On a serious note, if there’s a movie that’ll tickle you to death, that movie will be “American Boy.” It’s down right funny. The kind of funny that will not impose itself on you, because the characters are too serious about their roles, but kind of funny that’ll sneak on you and keeps you laughing all the same and don’t really know why you cracking up almost to tears. Up on the screen a laughable situation is taking place and you can’t hold back on it. We need such entertaining movies sometimes, just so we temporarily forget our worries. For the producers, you bet they were dancing in the street for some good cash sipping in.
This movie reminds me of my boyhood days when we came home on vacations from secondary school boarding homes and we’ll sat right at the vehicle parking lots at the center of the village, in the evenings waiting on girls who stopped in our village for the holidays. We always watched the direction the girl would take and then we later go about combing that area, making unwanted visits to the neighborhood just so we made contacts with the girl or a close relative. One of us always wanted to beat gun ahead of the pack. Just as it was comic, so competitive it got most of the time for the person who’ll first approach the new girl. I looked back on those days with nostalgia. “American Boy” brings back my secondary school memories.
Mr. Bob (Psalm Ajeteio), wants a second wife and approaches a younger Akua (Nadia Buari) who doesn’t give him a time of day as Sandra Adu would give in to Nana Buckman (Psalm Ajeteio) in “Dangerous Father 2009.” Being that he’s the owner of the land where Akua and her mother squatted, running a local restaurant, he ejects them from the property but they are rescued by Charles (Morris Owusu) a young architect who is in Mr. Bob’s employ as a contractor. Charles who’s his Mama’s boy with boyish demeanor falls in love with Akua and before long he rents for her and her mother an apartment, opens her an uptown restaurant, and takes her shopping. Akua’s life turned 360 degrees for the better. But the neighborhood boys want piece of her too and she couldn’t give them time of her day. One of them, Abusei (Van Vicker) promises his neighborhood boys, she’ll win Akua’s heart if they can finance his mission to get her in bed.
Oh woman, thou fickle piece of earth,
Has thou forgotten yesterday
And seeth the feathery cloud for a firmament?
One of them volunteers to pay the expenses but only to get Akua in bed. Just one time. Abusei masquerades as an American marine on a special mission in Ghana. Akua falls for the lie and accepts engagement ring from him, while she abandons Charles. There, dear reader, Akua falls from grace to disgrace. Abusei and his friends fall apart, because he already accomplishes the mission by laying Akua, but now he seems really in love and keeps asking them for more money to take Akua out in style. He goes his way eventually, and with more deceptions, brings Akua into the one bedroom ghetto apartment where he naturally lives. When he’s cornered for the rent for Akua because Charles has withdrawn his assistance, he escapes his one bedroom running from both the landlord and Akua.
In his absence, Akua and her mother come looking for him and the Landlord takes them to the construction site where Abusei works. Charles is surprised to learn that one of his laborers, Abusei takes the love of his life, Akua and impregnates her. When Akua faces the truth, she passes out and the curtain went down.
This is a story about greediness and ungratefulness. Akua is not content with the fact that Charles gives her and her mother a place to lay their heads, and a restaurant to run uptown, when they are being ejected from a shack in a downtown ghetto. Now that she’s out of the cave and seeing the light, she becomes a better fool than smart.
Nadia’s acting in this movie could tell she has thoroughly gotten used to the glare of light in front of camera and most of the time, she hesitatingly responds to her cue as if figuratively, her behavior is telling viewers she’s not sure of the decisions she takes. I wonder if most people see what I see in the first few minutes of this film. A boom microphone shows at the far right corner of the screen. You bet the sound man was in training and he goofed or better yet, he was admiring Nadia. A boom in a film and not part of a prop is a serious mistake in a commercial film where big name actors are used. Carelessness of that sort in commercial film is an unforgivable sin.
NOTE: Quotation is the Writer’s.