30 Days in Atlanta

If Osuofia in London was made in 2014 with two actors instead of one, younger actors instead of an older one, Atlanta instead of London and a love angle instead of an inheritance angle, it would be this movie.

30 Days in Atlanta is the story of two Warri Boys – one more educated than the other, Ramsey Nouah being the educated one and AY being the other – who win a free trip to Atlanta for 30 days. The movie follows them as they arrive in the country and find out how different things are in the country. From an encounter with their uncle who has been turned into a househusband to an old friend who claimed to be working in the ‘oil and gas industry’ but actually works at the gas station, Akpos and Richard find hilarity in many situations until the somehow wind up in love.

If there was one thing that wasn’t lacking in this movie it was humor. For the length of the approximately 2hr long movie, there was a competent joke in every part for at least the first hour and a half. We give it to the writers for making an amusing storyline that is watchable. But that’s about where the greatness of the movie begins and ends.

It’s not strange to find that a majority of critics and reviewers are averse to comedy movies because there’s almost always a divide between audience perception and critical reception. This is because even though the movies work as an entertainer because of the jokes, they fail in everything else. There is hardly any originality or attempt to make it less predictable. At the end of the movie of course, everybody lived happily ever after, what else would you expect? Even when the means of achieving the happily ever after is ludicrous and completely implausible, we accept it because it is a comedy movie.

The movie had a parade of cameos and guest appearances from some of the industry’s best talents ranging from Majid Michel and Juliet Ibrahim to Desmond Elliot and RMD. These guest appearances definitely added to the entertainment value of the movie because it was just as fun watching the humor as it was seeing your favorite celebrities pop up on screen for short periods of time.

The storyline of the movie simply progresses as the men exhaust their free 30 day trial in the United States of America. Deciding on the quality of the movie is simply a question of your beliefs: do you think, like the famous line from the 2011 movie “The Dirty Picture”, that movies should consist of three things only “entertainment, entertainment and entertainment” or do you look for more in a film?