Keeping My Man

Keeping my man genuinely attempts to recreate a scenario that depicts modern day marital problems amongst the ‘twenty first century couple’. However, it comes off mostly as a wannabe “Why did I get married too” with wishy washy lines and not-exactly-there acting.

The original intent, I am assuming is to depict three couples struggling with different marital issues – both husband and wife. And for the most part in the movie I had a hard time deciding if the husband was right, the wife was right or if there really was any genuine conflict in the movie and this wasn’t all just a fashion parade.

The pairing between Alexx and Ini as the couple who are trying to bring the spice back into their marriage – at least the wife is while her husband rebuffs all her attempts – is a bit unconvincing. At first, the pairing between Ini and Alexx seems nearly comical considering the glaring age difference or semblance of one. This was the couple that I was most confused by because I just didn’t get it. I found myself yelling at the wife to just calm down in some scenes and shaking my head at the husband more times than was necessary. However, this was the couple that gave me the only 5 seconds of joy in this movie as per entertainment – and that 5 seconds is all there was, no more.

Monalisa Chinda and Kenneth Okolie as the couple who are trying to… well, ‘control their sex life’ is a nearly humorous concept. But if you think the idea is humorous then you need to wait till you find out just what the reason for all this drama is. Kenneth and Monalisa didn’t look that awkward together, to be honest. My major qualm really is with Kenneth Okolie’s performance. Now I love him when he’s smiling, he’s walking, he’s calm. So just smile, walk, flex and strut don’t require him to pull off any kind of deep emotion.

Rukky and Ramsey’s story was the only one with the potential to bring about any real depth in the movie. This attempt was flawed by Rukky’s lack of acting skills but was resuscitated – as much as one man possibly could – by Ramsey.

One thing I’d like to point out though is that therapists don’t sit behind big tables and have their clients sit in front of them like an interview. The purpose is to promote comfort, an interview is not comfortable.  All in all there were many points at which this movie could have developed into something more but it just seemed very flat. And by the way, what was the purpose of Karen Igho’s character?