Fate

I like that this movie paraded a lot of many unknown and upcoming faces, except for Chuks Blossom Chukwujekwu who is fast becoming a screen favorite since the cinema release of Flower Girl where he starred alongside ex-Tinsel star Damilola Adegbite and gave a good account of himself.

The simplicity but creativity in the opening credit and the introductory scene made me think I was in for a pleasant and entertaining ride, even though I hadn’t yet figured what the story was about. Two scenes later I became confused about who the story was really about.

It’s a fresh story of a ghost-girl, Leticia, who saddles a goal-getter movie producer, Levi, with the task of producing a script of a horror tale despite his earlier objections and the difficult task of convincing his co-producers to divert funds to it meant for another project.  The confusion was in a concurrent story about the narrator,  Sam – whom I thought initially was the main character – narrate his relocation to the Lagos city life as a bank manager, his strong dislike for Nollywood ‘substandard’ movies and his turn around to pursuing a career in Nollywood upon falling in love with an upcoming female star Alycia.

There was no clear distinction between both stories as to which was the main-plot or the sub-plot.

Well, I sat through the movie, if anything, just to know how it will end.

I felt really disappointed when the closing credit came up that the producers had undermined what should have been a great movie with a lackadaisical execution.

A beautiful story like this deserved a lot of nurturing to match the beautiful cinematography. It also deserved actors that can act, I mean act really well. Apart from Fredrick Leonard who played Sam, Desmond Oduduba who played his younger brother Tom ,  then Blossom who played Ray his rival in getting Alycia, and Bisi Shy who acted as Kemi, best friend to Alycia, whom were convincing in their character interpretation, the other actors for the most part rendered their lines like a teleprompter was in front of them. I was really angry because it was such a beautiful story that wasn’t given the attention it deserved.

Other things that gave the movie a minus was the sound. It was horrible. They should have done an ADR (Audio Digital Recording) in almost all the scenes to make up for poor location audio as I battled to hear what the actors were saying amidst serious environmental interferences. I know what it is like to shoot in Lagos which is riffed with beehive activities, but you do not want people thinking about that in your movie when they should be concentrating on the story.

The special effect used for the ghost-girl was a NO coupled with her bad acting.  The narration too was unnecessary; even though the writer was trying to show how creative he is, seeing that he had two stories that had two male leads and two female leads. It would have worked if he had interspersed it with a narration from the producer character as well, and looked for a logical and dramatic way to tie both narrations at the end.

That much said, I must give kudos to them as regards the picture quality and the cinematic effect it seemed to pull, but could not help but notice some slight glitches in the use of the jibs/crane for some of the movement’s shots. Also, the sex scene between Blossom (Ray) and Rukaya Mashoud (Alycia) was beautifully done; it moved me in errm … never mind.  A job well done.

In all, it’s an average movie that would have been superb if all the error spotted had been minimized from pre-production to post.-production.