Julien Neaves, Caribbean Head Writer
Plot: Down-on-his luck construction worker Travis Duke purchases a winning lotto ticket for a million dollars. As he waits to cash his winnings, he makes several poor decisions, including borrowing large sums of money from a drug lord called “Bling”.
Review: Dramedy Quick Pick (2017) was directed by Tobago-born Miguel K Lashley. And it is pretty cool to review a film set on the island of Tobago, which is one half of the two-island nation state and my home country Trinidad and Tobago. This is gonna be a quick one, and we’re starting with the positives. The comedy is not the cleverest, but there was a fair share of moments that made me laugh out loud. The acting is about what you would expect with this level of production (not great), but David Abraham as profligate Travis and Shabba Julien as no-nonsense Bling were both decent enough. And I liked what they did with the visuals, namely the counting down of the million dollars and most of the time jumps. The dialogue is also very authentic.
The main negative is the audio quality, and it is difficult to hear characters at several points. It is most frustrating. This could have been mitigated by having captions throughout, and not just during one bar scene. The plot is your typical escapist fare but could have benefitted from more variety and some more depth to the themes. And a NSFW warning, the film has a lot of profanity and some sexual and sexually suggestive scenes. Overall, I enjoyed the comedy of Quick Pick and its cautionary tale of over-indulgence and poor money management.
Editor Jules’ Score: 6.5 out of 10
You can watch Quick Pick for yourself by clicking here. And you can check out more Trinidad and Tobago content below:
Julien “Editor Jules” Neaves is a TARDIS-flying, Force-using Trekkie whose bedroom stories were by the Cryptkeeper, learned to be a superhero from Marvel, but dreams of being Batman. I love promoting Caribbean film (Cariwood), creating board games and I am an aspiring author. I say things like “13 flavours of awesome sauce”. Read more.