Secret Shadows

-Story: [3 out of 5] To be honest, when I started watching this movie, I fell asleep after the first ten minutes. I don’t want to blame that entirely on the story oh but I wasn’t hooked from the start. Regardless, after watching the entire movie, I must say that this was one of the few good stories I have seen in a while and I would advice anyone else to watch this movie.

-Originality: [2 out of 5] Frame wise, not so much. I have seen a lot of movies where the mother-in-laws accuse their daughter-in-laws of being gold-diggers; but execution wise, this movie was impeccable.

-Predictability: [3 out of 5] Any adept Nollywood viewer, knows that once they cast a new actor for any scene especially in the first few scenes, it is a bad sign for that character. Either the character would be broken up with or he/she travels or better still he/she dies. It is a simple Nollywood rule that I hope one day would be reversed. I am not saying cast Genevieve Nnaji for only one scene and then put her picture up on the package of the movie because that is fraud. However, do it tactfully and don’t let the viewer know that the character is history.

-Directing/Editing: [0 out of 5] I have a couple things that bother me about the directing of this movie or should I say the production. First of all, Tontoh’s son is supposed to be about 4 or 5 years old yet the kid stands at about 4 – 5 ft tall. I don’t care what kind of growth spurt he has, no 4 or 5 year old looks like an eight year old. Whoever did casting failed woefully because only a fool would believe that that boy was 4 years old. Secondly, they say that first impressions last the longest. I am guessing the director/producer of this movie was not thought that. Naturally after seeing the introductory scene of this movie I would stand up from my sofa, walk up to the DVD player and press eject. The introductory scene in which they start up with a view to the city looked like it was copied and pasted from a Liz Benson movie without even sharpening the video quality. Not that there is anything wrong with Liz Benson movies except that this is the 21st century and those movies are in the same time as Nneka the pretty serpent. Thirdly, the scene where Ngozi Ezeonu is supposed to be arriving to Lagos from the east, the director decided that he would introduce her arrival by showing a clip of a landing “Emirates” plane. Correct me if I’m wrong but doesn’t Emirates only fly international flights? And finally at the top of my list of grievances is Mary’s typing. Supposedly she is a writer who is currently working on her 5th novel yet in the scene where they show her typing my girl is typing using one finger. Nothing wrong with that, except that it is completely unbelievable. If she actually typed her first 4 novels like that then they must have taken her about 5 years respectively to finish.

-Acting quality: [2 out of 5] Chai Chai Chai. I just recently found out who Mary Uranta is. Quite shockingly, this is not my first time of seeing her in a movie, I think she has been in a lot of Nollywood movies and some Ghallywood movies, the girl is really making progress and getting higher in her career and I seriously hope that the higher she gets, the more she learns to act because as it is right now she can not act. Alright, maybe that was harsh but honestly, whenever she started talking in this movie I simply fast forwarded all her scenes and if you are an actress you definitely do not want people fast forwarding through your scenes. She’s not a very convincing act, in fact she is not real. I just want to lock her up in a room with Uche Jombo and bring her out after 3 days, maybe some of Uche’s realness would rub off on her. Anyways she is not the main reason for the 3 though, some of the new acts in this movie could not act. Namely, Tontoh’s first boyfriend and Halima’s boyfriend, Afam. I am very pro new talents in Nollywood but I said pro-new talent not pro no talent.

-Video and Audio Quality [2 out of 5] When I think of a classy movie, I definitely do not think of a movie with bad lighting but this movie was an exception. I had to keep looking at the logo on the right hand side of the screen that said Executive Image just so I could believe that this really was an executive image movie. I was just thinking, isn’t it possible that someone put that logo on there and this really isn’t an executive image movie because all the Executive Image movies I have seen so far usually have such vivid and crisp images that I have to remind myself this is an African movie. This one however, was an exception.

-Soundtrack [3 out of 5] If there was anything that was really done right in this movie, then I’d have to say it was the sound schemes and the music. Then again, it was an Austine Erowele music. Only a few people can touch him when he comes to music, as a matter of fact only three I can remember off the top of my head come close to his work and they are Sammy Okposo, Stanley Okorie, and of-course Maxwell Leonard. I pray for the day that people like JJ Bunny  would learn to incorporate music so systematically into their movies.