Saddens me to write this as I love to see and support black people on screen, we know it's not always been a thing. However, the story makes no sense, its too far from reality and not executed in a way good enough to suspend disbelief. Disappointing film, can't recommend wasting your life watching it. Plot holes, embarrassing errors and ignorance littered throughout as if the information is not readily available. There was a great opportunity for a bit of representation, albeit with humour, but it felt like a film directed and written by a lazy author with little scrambled knowledge of 'Africa', that mainly consisted of what they saw on "Coming to America". It's irritating that in 2020 films still continue to perpetuate tired, old ignorant tropes about African people and actually present it as humor. The film talks of Africa as if it's a monolith, there are approx 54 very different countries with nearly 2000 languages, different dialects and distinct accents depending on geographic region. With globalisation, the internet and the large amount of first and second gen African presence in the west, it wouldn't have been hard to do a little research or find just a couple of people to help. This really overshadows much of the film because it's entwined in the main storyline. It's a shame because the main actors are not terrible but the material they had to work with is poor. Other than the embarrassingly ignorant cultural references and jokes throughout, the storyline is outlandish, fragmented and far fetched. I hope to see the main actors shine in other films, they had nice onscreen chemistry and I've seen most perform very well in other shows/films. I'm definitely here for representation, but please do it properly. The actors and we the audience deserve better.
Review of Love Jacked
