This is your embedded relatively young movie critic, reporting from somewhere near the school library at Buddo SS, and it’s all about adolescence, puberty and that vital stage when you literally feel you own the world – your teachers hate you because your dope… and for some reason your mum and dad’s ideas are way outdated.
That’s the breaking story of a teen drama, Reform that premiered at the National Theatre last Tuesday.
As a critic, you may choose to get overboard by dropping staff that didn’t impress in a movie but Reform is different. Not the biggest premiere I’ve seen but the smartest and by far, the most emotional one.
From the innocent faces of the movie’s young cast, to their sheer amusement of being interviewed by the press, the scenery at this movie premiere was as humbling, captivating and yet corrupting.
Then there was that documentary of the making of the film, totally made us fall in love with the characters before we even watched the movie.
Flanked by their parents , guardians and friends, the young boys and girls seemed to be living their dreams way earlier, most of the times they left the excitement of meeting more renowned actors like Felix Bwanika, Jayant Maru and Edwin Mukalazi overtake them.
Despite a theatre warning that mobile phones have to be switched off or in silent, the predominantly young crowd, probably owning their first android couldn’t take any of that, before the movie screened, they kept texting, chatting and taking selfies, from the upper section of the auditorium, you could think the projector beam was hitting a disco ball – too many little screens.
But this seems a good sign for Reform, because we can already assume most of these teens will purchase the film on DVD to see it in an environment where their voice and text conversations won’t be hindered by some adult always reminding them to be quiet.
The lead character, Kato (Mark Katamba) is the famous guy around campus; he dates one of the most beautiful girls in school, Stella (Edith Victor Kabazalwe). Kato is a bully; he lives like he has shares in Buddo SS - the school in the movie.
Kato and his crew get in a fight with a naughty boy who reports the case to the warden master Mr. Adams (Deception’s Charles Kaboggoza) good with solid punishments. Kato covers for the friends to survive expulsion and ends up serving several handy punishments that put his fame on the line.
A series of events leads to Kato being forced into the readers club, where his paths cross with a born again (read insignificant nobody) girl Grace (Justine Namuganda).
As you may know, for many of these high school movies, the insignificant girl in the end turns out being more beautiful than the famous shots. Like that, they read Shakespeare stories into love.
The Joseph Sebagala movie boosts of a very good picture that will definitely settle it into one of the best that have been done here. However, the actors may have been nervous that we somehow failed to feel their joy or pains in the story – there are times their expression was just flat, but I guess this is because they are first timers; they have a lot of room to improve.
But it wasn’t all bad with the acting, Kaboggoza definitely put on the best his performance in this movie, most of the times he reminded me of my own high school quarter master.
One of the actors in the movie happens to be real life teacher at the school and her performance was worth noting.
According to the Buddo SS headteacher Lawrence Muwonge, film is an upcoming industry in the country and its good to train his students to get ready for it once they are done with school; “we want parents to embrace talent as a source of income.”
Reform is a good film with a remarkable picture, sound and story, the only undoing to it was just that all the music scores were done by Kenneth Mugabi, this makes the film sound like a very long music video of a person.
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