Daydreamers is the best film to pick up when you’re in the mood to have a long and peaceful sleep. To justify this statement, the film has nothing to offer the audience. Over its run time of 102 minutes, the film just works on a simple formula.
The new Somali film is about people dreaming about escaping from their land and going to the US. But are they doing anything to achieve this? No efforts are done from the side of these people and they are petty thieves who like to whore around.
I’m astonished at how the writers were able to maintain this story for 102 minutes. A better approach for such a short concept is always a short film as you don’t want to bore your audience and get the message delivered.
Living the big American dream, the people are dragged into a scheme manufactured by Assad, the local gangster. They pretend to live as a family to get into the US. The audience is smart enough to know how films like these end up to be.
I liked how some good raps and beats were inserted at the beginning of this tiresome film. Assad used to earn his livelihood by preying on people’s dreams of living in the US. He managed to escape the eyes of the lawmakers as well. With his Russian technique, he gives a good first impression. Every thief gets caught one day and the same happened here.
When you go on and read more about this film, people have said how the accent too seems fake. If you are showing a film with ‘based on true events’ written on the screen, the least one can do is to keep the local things intact.
Showing people hungry for passports of the developed nations and reducing them to something they might not be is not acceptable. The film doesn’t have any flaws, but is a flaw in itself.
The actors did an average role and there’s nothing specific that can be pointed out and was good in the movie. The director being Somali didn’t do justice to his people and might receive a lot of backlash. Showing your people on international platforms like Netflix requires a lot of input which is the correct one. He showed his people in a bad light and that too was an unsuccessful event.
What I feel could have worked in the favor of the concept the maker had in mind was a humorous approach. In all, it is a film that can be easily skipped.
Final Score – [2/10]
Reviewed by - Riya Singh
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Publisher at Midgard Times