Starring:  Brenda Wairmu, Nick Mutuma, Catherine Kamau, Pascal Tokodi

Synopsis:  Best friends, Celine and Josh, are navigating their way in the dating world but is romance with each other lurking beneath their platonic relationship? 

Review:

Celine and Josh have been friends since childhood and their relationship remained in the “friend zone.” They confided in each other about their dates – Celine was in an “open relationship” while Josh dated a woman who wasn’t wrapped too tight.  When their romances crumbled, Celine and Josh considered stepping their friendship up a notch.     

Let’s Talk. This is yet another movie that explored platonic relationships. Can male/female friendships exist without harbored romantic feelings? Based on most movies, and this one, there’s usually secret desires from at least one of the parties. The fear is always that a romance would ruin the friendship beyond repair.  

“Disconnect” had it’s highs and lows. The story, or lack thereof, was haphazard. It started off slow, as it introduced the many characters, and we got to understand Josh and Celine’s close friendship. From there it was all over the road. It’s one of those movies where the set up takes forever and once you arrive at the core of the story, which in this case was the potential romance between Josh and Celine, it wasn’t worth the wait. 

But on the other hand, there was an infectious camaraderie that flowed through the characters. The girl talk and male banter was funny for the most part and was even witty at times.  But then we had to spend time on characters that we weren’t really invested in. Making things worse was that we had to watch Celine get off the toilet. Twice. What was the point of that? SMH. And then things got a little raunchy to the point where I had flashbacks of the Hollywood movie “Girls Trip.” 

By the time we got to the part where we hoped Celine and Josh would confess their dying love for each other – the reason we watched – the story just went up in smoke. And it was confusing. In one scene it appeared that they would become an item and then in the next, they weren’t. What happened? We don’t even know what became of their friendship when the story concluded. 

So this was a romantic comedy without the romance. The writing was efficient at dialogue but unfortunately the actual story was inept. There may have been about fifteen minutes that you can actually refer to as a movie and the rest was just what I call “filler” scenes. 

For technical issues, the sound was not the greatest and this has been an ongoing issue with African films for years! 

Sadly, the movie oozed with potential and although it was somewhat entertaining, overall “Disconnect” was just that – a disconnect. EJECT.