Cry of the Orphans

Nollywood movies can be described as sadness porn, they do all they can to make you weep and add a nice happy ending but only after you have sacrificed salty water upon the altar. With films like this I find it hard to disagree. That’s not necessarily a bad thing but I am glad we have put the ‘Annabel’s and ‘Cry for Help’s behind us.

One would be tempted to call this film good, great even, if previous experience did not show that this was done completely by accident. This film was done by the exact same people that did ‘Desperate Girls’ and they had the exact same problem -haphazard execution. It is only the acting and the story that sees it through. Everything else, especially the production,  is tear inducing and not in the way they were intending. But one thing it has going for it is that  it is original. And interesting right up until the end where they just cut it abruptly with a title card. They spent so much time building the story, and it was a very good one, but then it was as if they ran out of film. Literally. Mid scene. Although, they didn’t need to add the secondary storyline about the pregnant women. This was useless and detracted from the main storyline, if they had limited filming time or budget then whole storyline could have been cut and it would have been a better movie. They just threw away a great movie, now no one can attempt a better portrayal without being unoriginal. The characters were really relatable, fascinating to watch and had a real depth.

The acting was superb. It is wonderful to see Cassandra Uhango from ‘Family Man’ proving her talent and working for it.Hopefully we will see her again, it was a tough role but she sold it well. Florence Uhoma and (newcomer?) Genny Uzoma were good as well but the bulk of the work was definitely from Cassandra.Let’s also give  the extras recognition especially the gateman. As with child actors, the ones in this film aren’t really that good but they weren’t bad enough to take over the story.

The production value really let it down, from mistakes in spellings too numerous to simply ignore to the unforgivable ending. You cannot invest so much energy into something and just abandon it. It counted really badly against them. Madam Gold’s ankara clothing were gorgeous and the sets were nice.

In conclusion, if you ready for the end then watch. It’s just too good to miss, which makes its lackadaisical ending worse. By the way Irokotv new interface  has managed to make it harder to navigate the site, removed plot previews and actor archiving. Not impressed at all.