As Crazy As It Gets

If you are a Bollywood fan then you’ve seen movies like “Dil Chahta Hai” and “ZNMD” and if you are a Hollywood fan then you’ve seen “When Harry Met Sally”. These movies belong to a beautiful genre of film that I shall hence forth refer to as ‘road movies’. “As Crazy As It Gets” tries as a road movie but misses, unfortunately.

“As Crazy As It Gets” is the story of a man who lives an ordinary but peaceful life with his girlfriend whom he has been intending to propose to for months now. He suddenly meets a pregnant Katherine, played by Omoni Oboli, at the club when she falls down beside him. He takes her to the hospital and all of a sudden she claims that he is her husband and her baby daddy.

At this point, there are two main directions the story can take – either it becomes a psychological thriller where he is actually the father and is unaware of it (wouldn’t that make for great storytelling) or it becomes a comedy where she is crazy and holding on to him for whatever reason. This movie, took the latter approach.

In the early scenes, he is attempting to avoid her by all means necessary but these attempts were too weak and not very well thought out. For someone who is attempting to run away from a crazy woman, why did you not escape the night at the hotel? Why did you not take her to a restaurant and leave while claiming to go to the restroom? Why did you even let her in your car in the first place?

Before any of this drama even begins, the movie takes about 10 to 15 minutes of expository time to familiarize the audience with the male lead’s character. This part of the movie stretched and drag and honestly if Omoni did not show up when she did I doubt that I would have made it through the entire movie.

As the movie progresses and the struggle continues, he resolves to take Katherine back to her home which happens to be in a different state and hence the road trip begins. It’s a perfect formula for an original romance except it has the original bit locked but no romance was to be seen. There was no chemistry between Chucks Chyke, who plays the male lead, and Omoni Oboli. In fact, whenever they were in scenes together you could feel the respect but there was no attraction to be seen.

ACAIG is one of the first nollywood road movies I’ve seen so it is nice for a first. However, considering that it was going to be a road movie, definitely too much time was spent in the beginning on irrelevant characters.

In the initial scenes with Omoni, the writers are really asking for a lot from the viewers in terms of believability. The initial premise of a lady just sticking to another guy like that is such a huge leap from reality, and the manner in which he eventually falls for her is not built up well enough.

Regardless of all of that, the movie is still interesting in that it is different. Omoni brings a lot of life to the movie and the male lead, Chucks Chyke, does very well individually as an actor. Now there is definitely work that needs to be done with his responses to the other actors in the frame.