Lunch Time Heroes

You couldn’t possibly have been as excited as I was to see the trailer for Lunch Time Heroes. I mean… you think you were excited, but I promise you that your excitement was child’s play in comparison to mine. But then I saw the movie.

Lunch Time Heroes follows the life of a new youth corper recently assigned to a secondary school for the “rich and famous”. She is ecstatic to be the first corper selected to work in this school, but that is until she actually goes to the school. Upon arrival, she is met with a cold reception and realizes that nobody wants her there: not the other teachers, not the principal and definitely not the student.

It’s so bad that they literally had no plans for what she would be doing during her time there. All this is until a competition comes up. It’s a multi skill competition that tests the students in sports, arts, English and the works. Many students are selected but some are left behind and these ‘some’ are assigned to our corper, played by Diana Yekini.

Storywise, it is an interesting and mildly original concept. I say mildly original because in as much as the order in which the ingredients are added to the soup are ‘different’, it is still the same ingredients in the exact same soup that we have tasted before.

The biggest positives of this movie is the concept/the idea, Diana Yekini and their ability to sell the movie as more than it actually was. Diana did a great job holding the film from start to finish and we know this to be true because in the hands of less capable hands we would not have made it to the halfway point of this film. She performs as though it’s another day in her regular life and she is not actually being filmed.

The sets of the movie, the score and the production quality also help to uplift the film but that’s about where it ends.

We thought seeing Dakore would make this movie better but in reality she was only in the movie so she could back the people she was talking to and speak directly to the camera. The first time Dakore talks facing the camera and backing the other person, it’s art. After that it’s just plain weird and she does it time and time again. Beht why?

Many of the actors seem a bit mechanical initially especially Kenneth. This was especially surprising because he usually does pretty well. He does pick up in the end but initially in the first staff meeting he was causing us all to loose hope.