The Maidens

-Originality: [0 out of 5] Am I the only one that watched this movie thinking, “This is a rip of the TV series, ‘the tudors‘?” I mean, with very little change, it is the same theme. A king playing around with maidens. He wants one maiden. She plays hard to get. He is ready to do anything to have her, including chase his wife away and make her queen… yadi yadi ya… The tudors! In fact, comparing it to the tudors is going too far from home. This is not the first John Dumelo as an ashawo king movie that we have in Africa. He does the same thing in the movie, “The King is Mine” alongside Nadia Buari and Jackie Appiah, and an even closer match is the storyline of (the yet to be reviewed)”Blind Queen” alongside Ngozi Ezeonu, Ini Edo and Chioma Chukwuka

-Predictability: [0 out of 5] Pick a coin, throw it in the air, wait for it to land… the side the coin will land on (notice I didn’t say dice cos that has way more sides, the coin only has two options) is less predictable than the way this movie ends. If you did not see the end coming then you’ve never seen a Nollywood movie.

-Directing/Production: [2 out of 5] No movie that has four parts can get past 3 in this criteria… and to aggravate matters this movie was just basically over redundant… the first part could have been condensed to 15 minutes (max), take away all the unnecessary scenes and all the overly prolonged scenes (I mean did we seriously need to watch all the maids and guards eat food for 10 minutes at the princess’ birthday party?) and the movie would have been way better. No apparent cinematography and no directing flops that I noticed.

-Acting quality: [3 out of 5] It’s actually quite disappointing watching the cast of this movie. I mean, one would look at the cover and be like “Wow!!! Look at all the people in this movie. This ish must be good” I mean, Rita, Mercy, and John… all in one movie? Christmas must have come early. Slide movie in DVD Player… 15 minutes later… “What arrant rubbish”. John and Mercy I kind of understand but what on earth possessed Rita to accept this script? Hmm… Regardless, Rita played her role perfectly well. She embodied the grace of a queen. Amazing performance. Mercy also did an amazing job in this movie. John Dumelo o dear John, I really hope in my heart of hearts that you watch the scripts you accept because I feel like you are wasting with all these ashawo king roles honestly. Biola Ige… please now! Please have mercy on us and stop acting. O gini? You have to have a clue that you are incapable of acting. The first scene I saw her character crying about the embarassment rendered her father was supposed to be at the most sad but the only emotion I felt was humor, like “is that you crying? choi if they call actors to stand on the left you sef go follow stand”. Chiwetalu Agu again played the typical Chiwetalu Agu role. Emeka Amakaeze as Kizito, lit up the screen for me. I loved his character and he played it fabulously well.

-Setting: [2 out of 5] The palace was shaped as a hummer (if you didn’t catch this then… I have no words). I mean everything, the windows were made like a hummer window the doors were made like the wheels… I was thoroughly amused by this. It was the same palace used in the movie, “Princess my foot”. One setting that made no sense to me was the Princess’ birthday scene in which the only guests were her parents, the maidens and the guards. I mean even if her life is so sad that she has no other young friends then at least they should have brought friends of the family seeing as she is after all the only child of the royal family.

-Costume/Make-Up: [3 out of 5] Loved the royal attire

-Video Quality: [3 out of 5] Good

-Soundtrack: [3 out of 5] Same “O hail the king” soundtrack from “The King is Mine”. Listen to the soundtrack below

-Musical Score: [4 out of 5] Nicely done