Lagos Cougars

The feeling that you’ve seen a movie even before you see the movie is hardly ever a good thing. This is not inception.

Lagos Cougars is the story of three supposedly older women who look like their in their late 30s who are dating meet and have encounters with men in their early 20s. The movie is supposed to be funny, the movie is supposed to be lively, the movie is supposed to be fun. The movie ended up being questionable, with many scenes that kept you wondering if that was necessary and many conflicts that were really not strong enough to develop a story around.

Uche Jombo plays the happy cougar who has embraced her lifestyle and her love for young men. She is unabashed about it and gladly flaunts her toy boy played by Alexx Ekubo much to the chagrin of her two friends. Alexx Ekubo who plays the toy boy is not only a toy boy but also a boy with a girl on the side. The interplay of these characters could have been so much better than what was presented. In fact, I would have gladly accepted the cliched storyline of boy loves girl and uses sugarmama to finance his life. However, this plot between Uche and Alexx and Yekini (who play’s Chantelle, Alexx’s girl on the side) is so aimless that it starts off with no point in the beginning and finishes up with no point in the end.

Monalisa Chinda plays a mother with a son in the 20s who mistakenly has a rendezvous with her son’s best friend whilst on holiday in Houston. She returns home, throws a party for her son and is reacquainted with her supposed-to-be-one-night-stand. The story spirals from then on into a couple of romance scenes, a few fight scenes, and many dilemma scenes. The story was mildly entertaining but the end left much to be desired. I mean was there really a point to this storyline? Is there a message that was supposed to be passed on to the audience or was this just a filler? In the middle of the story, I was rooting for this couple by the end I was no longer sure it was the same writer that wrote the first half of their story that concluded it because the messages were very mixed.

Finally, Dianella Chioma Okeke plays Joke the third friend who is engaged to a philandering Bobby Michael until one of her young male employers succeeds in wooing her. Her story was the only tangible storyline in this entire movie. With better development and better actors, I would watch this as its own movie. I wish it didn’t have that really ridiculous filmy ending to it but I can’t complain they gave me one half good story.

Moving past that, there were many more things wrong with the movie asides from the story. Like the directing was very haphazard and unmethodical. The camera was doing things I couldn’t really explains and in some parts the flow seemed very cut and paste. I couldn’t understand why make-up couldn’t cover Daniella’s eyebags and why her sugar-boy had those kind of dialogues that he obviously couldn’t pull off. The dialogues are very run of the mill, very unoriginal quintessential romance corniness on the level of you are the sugar in my tea and the cockroach in my cupboard.

My biggest complaint though is with the made-in-Houston scene. It seems like as soon as the nollywood cameras touch American soil everything begins to go wrong. The flow just goes off, purpose lost, and everything seems tacky.

Honestly, I can’t say that the movie was worth watching. I will say though that there was more than one opportunity for improvement. If people actually took the time to go over this a couple more times, from script to directing to editing and casting, it could have been better.