Brave Orphan

In this era where Nigerian movies are being shown in the cinemas and standards are being raised to critical acclaim some things shouldn’t be encouraged. One of such is this movie. I think it shouldn’t have been made at all.

When I saw Mercy Johnson on the jacket cover I had thought I would be in for a jolly ride. Yes! A ride I got but one that was marred with potopoto (muddy) potholes, and hungry and angry looking bribe collecting policemen.

The movie is a two part film that follows the survival of a certain orphan Emly, played by Mercy Johnson, who rose from a nobody to a societal big girl. She was supposed to be the central character but the screen time was spent more on her boy friend Dexter, Van Vicker, who shared it between his parents, as their informal marriage counsellor on their troubled marriage, and the other half was in wooing Mercy and trying really hard to keep her, upon the discovery that she had survived her bitter past by pimping prostitutes to top government officials that included his father.

The story idea is not fresh but would have been very interesting if its execution had been excellent. It lacked proper story structure. The producers should have concentrated more on it’s development before going on set to shoot. There was confusion in establishing who the story was really about, and when I did sense whom they wanted it to be about I find it annoying that she wasn’t equipped with any purposeful goal that would have helped to drive the story to a frenzied conclusion. I couldn’t tell at the end why the orphan was brave afterall.

Notwithstanding, some of the actors like Mercy and Jibola Dabo gave a very good account of their acting prowess but I find Van Vicker’s acting a bit lukewarm. Audio wasn’t too bad but it could have been better, and I find really annoying the soundtrack effects that contended with the actors dialogues and action most of the time. There was no need for the movie to be in two parts, if the unnecessary scenes and characters had been edited out.

The story is everything that is wrong with the movie. Like the saying ‘ you can make a good or bad movie out of a good script’ there is also the fact that you can never ever make a good movie out of a bad script.