Reviewing Blended

     As a film viewer, I enjoyed 'Blended',  I personally feel that all Adam Sandler roles are similar, so if you are fairly conversant with his movies, you oughtn't to be shocked. Also, the film is filled with young actors and as A.O Scott put it," their résumés will outgrow this embarrassment."
     Most people who see the movie will probably recommend it for its lightweight comic athmosphere. However, it did poorly  terribly poorly in reviews. After reading, A.O Scott's review, (see it here) I discovered that the job of a film critic is tedious. It could lead a person to confuse the objective of a movie with the features seen in the movie. As seen in this review, he seemed to assume that the movie was aiming for a higher intellectually endowed crowd. I am of the opinion that the producers of Blended were aiming at financial gain. I also disagree with his advise to parents that the movie would make their children stupid. I believe it would make them geographically and culturally poor not stupid, probably idiotic, but definitely not stupid.
      I agree with him on some points though. He notes that Blended has its retrograde gender politics; its delight in the humiliation of children; its sentimental hypocrisy about male behavior; its quasi-zoological depiction of Africans as servile, dancing, drum-playing simpletons. The last is the bane of my problem. After watching the movie, I was utterly disgusted with how they portrayed the african culture. Africa is not a 'kumbulu kumbala' region. this movie makes people come out of the cinema with the impression that African people are similar to animals, speaking  in RIDICULOUS accents, and dancing to songs which they assume show african style. Not to be too sentimental and go off on a tirade, I will state that the propagation of the 'Africans live with animals in close proximity and behave like them' notion was very wrong. This was emphasized in the Lion King where that land was regarded as Africa.
    The greatest insult of the movie in terms of the African disregard, is that the movie was actually shot in South Africa. A cursory look at the nominees of the concluded BET awards, show that African music is nothing as was portrayed in the movie. The likes of P-Square who are signed to Akon and are internationally recognized for hits such as Chop my money and Personally, Tuface Idibia who even just released a song with T-Pain (widely remembered for African Queen), Tiwa Savage who is signed to Sony Records, Ice Prince and M.I who are famous rappers, amongst a host of others show that African music is global and of a higher level than shown in the movie. Even Mafikhizolo, who can be considered as leading 'African cultural' artistes seeing as they sing in swahili, still use beats and tunes that are of a higher nature than seen in the movie. This is terribly disappointing.
    I therefore rate Blended as a one-star movie and this is just for Terry Crew's acting. He finally played a role that I feel would have been challenging for him.