Troubled King

There are some kind of movies that can only be watched on fast-forward! And if you’ve never watched a movie on fast-forward then either you’ve not seen that many Nollywood movies or your remote control doesn’t have a fast-forward button.

Then you might ask, if you’re going to watch a movie on fast-forward then why watch the movie at all? The fact is that there are some movies that seem interesting, the storyline seems entertaining enough and the actors are good so it grabs the viewers attention. However, it drags on and on: scenes are longer than they should be, conversations are redundant, unnecessary scenes are appended into the movie all in a bid to get a four part movie. And this movie was guilty of all of the above.

I had to fastforward through so many scenes of driving and crying and complaining and some more complaining and grunting, that if you deleted all the scenes I fastforwarded through you’d probably have a 2 or even 1.5 part movie.

Seeing Uche Nancy on the crew list for this movie (not only in costume but also in assistant production) set up some ground expectations (which all came through in the end): #1 the movie would be longer than it needed to be – which it was #2 the costumes would be ‘interesting’ (interesting here not necessarily being a good thing or a bad thing) – which they were #3 the movie would have the usual cast and the usual unnecessary fluff – which it did

The storyline behind the movie is arguably entertaining but the odds of any viewer having enough patience to navigate all the overly prolonged scenes and missed attempts at humor is little to none. Add to that the fact that underneath all of that is really not a new or original storyline, just makes it very discouraging to watch.

Need I mention the unrealistic aspect of it all: in which village does an igwe double as a chief medical doctor? Maybe I can understand if he just owns the hospital but being a full time doctor and an igwe? Come on now

However, most of the actors in this movie whose names we know of like Mercy, Mama G and Kenneth did a great job with their rendition. I think Mercy Johnson was pregnant whilst shooting this movie and she didn’t let her hold her back (which absolutely frightened me in scenes were she was running and falling and being pulled), she still gave an amazing rendition.

As regards everyone else in the movie, most of the extras were bad some could hold their own but were nothing fantastic. I especially liked Oma Nnadi, however, she did her role justice and brought energy to the screen whenever she was on it.