Alero’s Symphony

There has never been an Izu Ojukwu movie that I liked or ever thought of as ‘good’. Every Izu Ojukwu movie that I have ever seen till date, I’ve always loved and thought of as great. After seeing Alero’s Symphony, however, I guess there is an exception to every rule.

Alero’s Symphony is the story of Alero, the law student of a famed lawyer who also happens to be insanely in love with music. It is the formula of every Disney channel. However, we don’t quite mind it in Nollywood because we do not get enough of it as it is. Her family takes a vacation to an Island where she meets and falls for one of the Island boys -played by Faze – who also sings and makes music.

If you are a ‘true child of the land’, you will remember Faze from his Plantation boy days. The musical group back then was to die for and his voice was out of this world but I do not know whose genius idea it was to put him in a movie. Faze, also known as Chibuzor Orji, really could not deliver the character to any sort of degree. There have been crossovers before that at least ‘tried’ and we could ‘endure’, however Faze’s scenes came off as comical. In the so called romantic scenes – which by the way, I do not realize are actually supposed to be romantic scenes until they literally spell it out for me – the audience will roll in laughter listening to Faze deliver supposedly ‘romantic lines’. There was no chemistry between Faze and Ivie in this movie, so the audience will just have to make do with the comedy they provide at these moments.

However, the introduction of Faze is not where the movie begins to go wrong. From the start it feels like the movie was made in 2005 until I realized it was actually a 2011 movie. In fact, if it was actually made in 2005 it would have been easier to endure because then most of the errors could have been overlooked as part of the times. It seemed like the movie had two different directors, one that was playing around before the island visit and one that got serious on the island.

The movie’s only gem is integrated within the storyline, no matter how much you have to endure to reach it. It brings up some very valid points about the music industry without having any preachiosity about it. The story of Faze’s character is also really well done; it’s either you think that or you think it’s not done at all. The story does not delve deep into his motivations and his past but tells enough to know that the character is a ‘man scarred’ without all the extraneous background information. The truth is that in Nollywood we are used to getting the background, but the fact is that if it was told to us in this movie it wouldn’t have added to the story.

We understand that the movie is a music movie but after a while you get really tired of hearing really loud music at every available interval. As far as the songs used in the movie go, there were one or two that were really good and the rest were fair enough but no terrible music. Kudos goes to the person responsible for that because it would be really hard to sell the character as a music enthusiast with no musical talent.

Alero played by Ivie Okujaiye, was one of her first outings as an actress post the AMBO win. It really was a strong performance for a first timer. Ivie held the movie in scenes where she had no other support – aka scenes with Faze. And otherwise her character’s personality shone bright even when she wasn’t speaking.

It’s the first Izu Ojukwu movie that I do not absolutely adore. I was made to wait a really long time to finally see it but in retrospect I wish I used that time for more fruitful endeavors. It’s not absolutely terrible a movie, but it doesn’t live up to the standard of the filmmaker.