Cheaters Book 1

Frank Rajah’s recent offering, Cheaters, is nothing that you did not already guess it will be. It follows that cliched all men-all women cheat formula to the Tee, and tops it off with little to no originality whatsoever, but all this is dependent on your point of view.

The movie, is at first, entertaining. It is hilarious, it is funny, it piques your interest… and then ten minutes later we fall into this unending cyclone of repeated motifs, repeated dialogues, redundant themes for every single character. The movie only manages to fall out of it when Adjetey’s character begins to take center stage. At this point the movie regains life, and then we follow Adjetey’s character on his quest to determine whether his wife is cheating on him, an idea which seems all too familiar by now to the avid film watcher. At first Adjetey’s quests are funny, sometimes they were cute but eventually they become annoying.

As the first book draws to an end, the focus on Adjetey’s story produces enough drama for one to actually stay awake and pay attention all the way to the end. But at the end, the cliffhanger they attempt to use to motivate viewers to hang in there for the second part has an entire opposite effect, at least on me. Basically at the end of book one, we are told that ‘now we have watched Adjetey play games, watch out for part two where Jackie will play games’. I don’t know about other people but if I just struggled to watch 2 hours of redundancy and at the end all you have to tell me is ‘voila, we have another two hours of very similar redundancy coming up for your viewing pleasure, please stay tuned’, I will not be staying tuned.

Cheaters is a comedy movie with many pretty individuals, very few actors, not much originality, and zero to no depth. Ninety-five percent of the movies cast could not act, a few struggled with an idea they seemed to have thought was acting, others acted sometimes and fell out of character other times (Omar), and only one guy held the entire movie together for me (Adjetey).

As a comedy, Cheaters, has no depth. It has funny moments but not enough to keep you awake. If you’re looking for something to play in the background, this is the movie for you but I don’t think it’s one that anyone should dedicate time out to watch. Frank Rajah’s movies are not known to move you or to inspire you, he only ever seeks to entertain but somehow he fails at even that in this movie.