Ek Lief Jou

What it's about:

Dirk de Jong (played by Kurt Darren) is a South African singing superstar with a heart of gold and a gold-digging bitch for an agent/fiancée in Lisa Snyders (Christina Storm). Together they concoct a massive nationwide campaign to find the 'perfect' young woman to appear alongside Dirk in his latest music video. Enter Anna de Clerck (Ilse de Vis), a hard-nosed reporter from Belgium sent to cover the event in SA and possibly, just maybe, discover her own talents as an entertainer.

What we thought:

Your appreciation of Ek Lief Jou will depend largely on your reaction to a line our romantic hero Dirk de Jong utters early in the movie. Freshly snubbed by distinguished journalist Anna, Dirk asks his younger brother, "Do I look braindead? Am I so superficial?" all puppy dog-eyed and utterly sincere. It’s a short, simple piece of dialogue but if it causes you to break into spasms of laughter, then you’re probably watching Ek Lief Jou to be ironic. If it melts your heart and gets you excited about joining Dirk on his journey of discovery, then you’re most probably a Darren fan already and the first to break out into his hit song "Kaptein" at family braais.

Either way, you’ll know what to expect from Ek Lief Jou. It’s a cheesy, almost sickeningly earnest romantic comedy about 'true love' and finding out what it really means. It starts off with mysterious shots of a bride and groom walking down a church aisle as a female voice philosophises on the matter.

Then we're zoomed off to a Belgian TV studio where Dirk de Jong is being interviewed about his superstar status back home and how much he loves helping poor kids by giving them free copies of his CDs. Those must really keep them warm at night. When he first meets Anna, Belguim's answer to Debora Patta, it's apathy at first sight and Anna has to practically be dragged to SA to cover the scintillating story of Dirk's contest to find his perfect pop video meisie. "X Factor! Idols! That's all people are interested in these days," her eccentric editor insists.

Though when the audition process starts with an array of women – young, old, obsessive, not-quite-women at all – performing a little jig onstage for Dirk and the other 'judges', it all ends as unspectacularly when they spot Anna mocking the contestants in the background, acting sexy, and decide that she's their girl after all. And that's kinda that. Anyone looking for a fun, tongue-in-cheek comment on reality TV competitions will be sorely disappointed.

Elsewhere, Dirk's horny half-brother Danie (Andre Frauenstein) chases every skirt that comes his way but is actually looking for real love. He gets into a few amusing battles with Lisa – there's no love lost between the two – and Dirk is either blissfully unaware of the war going on in his own home or is just happy to be distracted by a couple of performing monkeys.

To say that Christina Storm is a scene-stealer as Dirk's wretchedly self-serving fiancée is to say that she robs every scene of meaning the moment she opens her mouth. She has one facial expression - the bitchy smirk - and lets it do all the work for her. Not that she gets much help from the rest of the cast.

Darren pretty much plays himself – an overgrown Justin Bieber with ridiculous hair in flared, stone-washed jeans. Whatever personality he has is communicated solely in song and the movie only feels real when he sits down to play a little number on his guitar. What he lacks in the charisma department (i.e. a lot) he makes up for with a pleasant singing voice and some decent songs. Familiar hits like "Kaptein" and "Standing on the Edge" are rolled out like comforting relics. The music is perhaps the one department Ek Lief Jou doesn’t come off looking amateurish. Though we never even get to see this haloed music video around which the entire plot revolves. Did the writers forget about it?

There's just no escaping that the storytelling going on here is unfocused, lacklustre and not, in any way, advancing the wonderful work being done elsewhere in Afrikaans film (Jakhalsdans, Roepman, Die Ongelooflike Avonture van Hanna Hoekom). And for a schmaltzy romance, Ek Lief Jou seems almost determined to deny the audience an epic emotional pay-off. In one scene, Storm flashes her breasts during a playful game of rugby. Even if she'd pulled that stunt in every scene, it would not have made the movie any more remarkable.

That said, Ek Lief Jou does make for some lekker drinking game fodder. And, if you're in the right frame of mind, it can be a chortle-fest.