Don’t Play That Game

It’s puzzling how the Venus Films crew (i.e Frank Rajah, Abdul Salam Mumuni, etc.) manage to make the same movie over and over again, with the same cast over and over again, since the days of 4 Play without any significant change in script.

One of the most difficult tasks when it comes to these movies, asides from convincing yourself to hit play, is to decipher at the end of the movie what the movie was about. And this movie took extra steps to make that even more difficult. Don’t Play that Game is a story of 3 male friends and 3 female friends who wind up in a relationship with each other. John Dumelo is a mechanic pretending to be a wealthy entrepreneur in an attempt to enter the heart of the rich ?investment banker? played by Yvonne Nelson. Jackie Appiah is 29 years old and turns 30 in one month and she is determined to get married to ‘any man’ before her birthday. Then Eddie Watson, the famous world renowned boxer who also happens to be her ex-school lover, enters her life. Okawa Shaznay is in a relationship with a divorcee, played by Omar Sheriff Captain, who refuses to tell her that he has a son.

Reading the synopsis, it sounds like a decent movie. If the story that resulted from that synopsis was built around something more tangible than the messy collage the movie was, it might actually have been a better movie. But it wasn’t!

There were many lapses in storyline where one minute two characters are fighting or there is a huge revelation and the next minute they are friends again. One minute, it’s all about the game, the next minute everyone is in love. The recipe itself has been done time and time again but that’s not the major flaw of the movie. The biggest problem is that nobody actually put in the effort to make a cohesive storyline.

Again, don’t play that game was a fashion show of a movie: there were pretty actors, in pretty sets and pretty clothes, doing absolutely nothing. A brief period into the movie, Yvonne Nelson’s character pulls out a book which she claimed her mother gave to her and contains all the secrets to relationships. Note the “Act like a lady, think like a man” attempt. That moment when the book came out and the reference to the Steve Harvey book could be assumed was the single most stimulating moment of this 90 minute charade.

At the end of the movie you’re left unsure of what just happened. Is it the end? Is there a part two? Do I care?