Attempting to play with themes of mystery, suspense, unresolved puzzles, shady deals and unexplainable scenes, Be My Guest tells a very different story of unshakable lovers.
Acting was superb where Chris Attoh was concerned. Very natural, very real, Chris gives you that feeling you get when you watch good western movies: that you're not watching a movie at all. This is real. However, that hovering feeling of satisfaction and engrossment comes crashing down hard when you're slapped in the face by the horrible acting actors that surround him. That feeling worsens when you start to feel like a fish, panting hard and calling for rescue. It certainly does not augur well with the constitution when you have very good acting mixed with amateurish skills, as well as overused, tired and cliched expressions (forgive the triple tautology!)
The opening, most crucial, scene meant to define the rest of the movie for the watcher was commenced off very horribly by two stilted actors playing a young Johnny (Chris Attoh) and Zoe (Nadia Buari). One could almost see the puppet strings to their bodies and lips as they delivered the most expected reactions and brought stage to film. Only, the puppeteer was missing. And their acting was definitely not helped by the "She stole my heart and I want it back" speech. Damn! Could we use that elsewhere, say, in a primary 6 play! This was the reaction: sucking of teeth was much greater than the laughter.
Nadia Buari playing the unshakable, I'm-gonna-have-you-at-all-costs ex, stepped up a notch or two with her acting, BUT...(because there is always a "But" with Nadia Buari), she needs to drop her focus on how sexily she delivers a line, to delivering it as authentically as possible! Enough with the really slow batting of eyelids and pursing of lips when the words require your lips to be spread, as though she was soliciting for a kiss everytime! Another step would be to drop the "Ghanabritishamerican" accent that almost always gets you frowning real hard in confusion, trying to contemplate which accent was on at the moment. Before you realized, you've missed what was probably a very good scene! All in all, developing accents are not the problem here. Delivering them with authenticity in such a way it does not take away from the worthiness of your work is the real issue.
Otherwise, there is what looks like an intriguing, suspense-filled plot. You wonder, constantly, what is happening, what has just happened, why this is happening and what is going to happen. Okay, the first two "whats" sound as though the picture the director wanted to send across was not exactly clear, and that happened quite a lot. However, the scheming Zoe and the mysterious crumbs she leaves around gets you thinking real hard about what she's up to and how it is, in the long run, going to give her what she unrelentingly wants - Johnny.
This is a brief of the story: Zoe and Johnny are exes who fell in love in their teenage years. However, many years later, though Johnny has moved on and is getting married, Zoe aka Leila aka Susan (whichever works for you) is still seriously, almost insanely, attached to him. She employs many devious means to entangle him in her web. She does manage to buy him the wedding ring he puts on his wife's finger, sleeps with him on his honeymoon, plants the seed of distrust in a young marriage and claims finally to be pregnant for Johnny.
A tattoo on Zoe's neck seems to be the central subtle message by the director. It was mentioned several times plus, an interesting coffee table with the design was given a camera close-up.
Problem 1: Any hidden messages that were meant by that symbol of hidden Asian philosophy, apart from identification, were not carried across, that is, if there were any meanings behind it.
Problem 2: It was a fake tattoo, fine, but try to stick it at the same place on her neck! The tattoo kept moving around to different places on her neck!
There was also an inclusion and subtle repitition of the date, Friday the 13th, which is superstitiously believed to be a day of bad luck, and quite the bad luck turn of events occurred! This was a great way of forewarning the audience.
The movie was great with throwing unsolved puzzle pieces at the audience, but even greater at not putting the pieces together at the end of the movie. This was not the artistic way of leaving the audience baffled, questioning the meaning of life and all that sort of thing. No, it passed off as a poorly concluded script and action. Perhaps, it should have been titled, "The Puzzle we could not put together", then we'd know we did not have to look for a solid, tied up plot!
Criticism: The contrived Arabs for the early scenes of the movie were utterly horrible: costuming wrong, accents terrible! Please bring back Nadia's "Ghanabritishamerican" accent, no matter how annoyingly baffling it is! Secondly, it did not make any sense that an independent candidate, very desperate to become the President of a country, would sign on anyone with even the slightestt whiff of "con-artist" written all over her. In this case, It was publicized on major media outlets, TV and newspaper, that Zoe was a con-artist. But he still signed her on to his campaign. This was a man paying people off to hide his illegitimate daughter! Thirdly, the place used to shoot the hotel scenes in the beginning was the very same place used to shoot the hospital scene in the end. Better disguising could have done the trick because it sent mixed messages, "Are they back at the hotel?", etc.
It seemed that the movie was focused with hitting their audience with punchlines and 'punch-scenes', probably to draw laughter and "ei's" , but was less focused on pursuing a solid storyline and tying up the multiple plots. What was the independent candidate doing housing Zoe and Johnny in his house? Wass Zoe really pregnant? Was the faint at the end of the movie fake? What was the significance of Melissa being in the hospital? Had she forgiven her husband? What was the plan for Johnny? These were but a few of the many questions people asked as the movie ended.
The greatest aspects of this movie, however, was the awesome camerawork. There were great scenery shots of places like the Independence Sqaure, Villagio, etc. Playing with voice-over, blurred images, colorless scenes was totally dope! Eddy Blay did wonderfully well as the friend of Johnny. He was natural, funny and not over-the top. His authentic manner in delivering some of his funny lines is what made some of his audience laugh rather than at the lines themselves. Also, there was great way by which the independent candidate was characterized by music. One knew when he was going to appear simply by the gangsterish, 'I'm the don' track that started in the background.
