The State of Ghanaian Movies: Why Are We Progressing At A Retrogressive Rate?

Gone are the days when watching Ghanaian movies was a family thing. Nowadays you will be lucky to find a Ghanaian movie to watch with your little ones without being worried about the content or the words being used in the movie.

Growing up, the only thing you had to worry about was the ghost or witches in the movie but nowadays there is a whole lot to worry about. However, I will limit it to two in this write-up.

Although the production qualities have improved significantly, the level of acting has dropped dramatically. Compare the older movies like ‘Diabolo’ and ‘Kofi Nkrabia’ to any of the so called new movies in terms of acting and you will understand what I am talking about.

One of the people I am highly disappointed in is Majid Michel. As an actor, Majid has a huge potential but his constant ‘Tony Montana’ character is a put off for some of us. Using his movie Crime to Christ as an example, you could see that not only was the storyline a huge rip off from Scar Face, his acting and the whole screenplay was also stolen from the movie. He seems to have settled peacefully into this character to the extent that he plays it in almost every movie.

The use of foul language has become an integral part of Ghanaian movies with the latest instalment being ‘Single and Married’. The amount of swear words and foul language used in this movie is beyond belief and again, it is populated by big stars who could not question the script.

Of late it seems like Socrates Sarfo isn’t the only one trying to use sex to sell his movies. The Twi movies are following suit although they have a long way to go to catch up with movies such as ‘4 Play’. Nevertheless, ‘Let Me Suck Your Breast’ is almost on par with it.

The long and short of this piece is, let’s make good movies and stop championing bad acting, foul languages and stealing a whole screenplay and selling it as if it is original.

I love Ghanaian movies but will I still be in love with it if things continue this way? I doubt I will…