Chocolate Pinging Salon

I bit the bullet for this one. With a horrendous name this film doomed itself from the beginning but it is …not that bad. It is a decent flick that is entertaining and not as stupid and senseless as the name suggests. My only issue was that it taught a very bad lesson about personal responsibility.

A novel idea, the plot charts the story of a salon to a village aimed at ‘improving’ and ‘pinging’ the village girls with false lashes, push up bras and fake butts. The villagers then get to all sort of shenanigans in order to afford them, some relevant to the plot and others completely out of the left field. It dragged at some points and despite its very interesting premise, it was boring. Too much time was spent on the village boys-men- chasing girls and talking endlessly as well as too much information about whatever rivalry was going on between the characters. The parts concerning the actual chocolate pinging salon were hilarious though and if only they had concentrated more on that it would have been enjoyable to watch. As per the moral it was a crap one, all the characters instead of blaming themselves for: stealing and causing her mother‘s business to fail, chasing after 15 year olds, injuring your father, instead decide to blame the salon , burn it down and accost the salon girls. The audience is then expected to cheer at this. A shameless celebration of not facing your own flaws and blaming someone else for them that we all are expected to join in.  As with a lot of Nollywood films, the plot is so good on paper but let down in execution.

Queen Nwaokoye was superb, entertaining and hilarious. She was the source of many laughs and gave a great performance. Tissy Nnachi was good considering she spends most of her time behind the camera. So was Walter Anga. I love the appearance of both Chinenye Nnebe and Eki Okoro from Living Nightmares. Really enjoy seeing them every time and their performance was top notch, they are a little more experienced every time and more comfortable. Eniola Badmus was not really given a chance to shine .Halima Abubakar and Oma Nnadi while good, had way too much focus. There aren’t any problems with the acting for sure.

Wardrobe and props were definitely on point, as one would expect from a film like this. The soundtrack was superb. The direction caused it to be slow and boring and places but the production value was good

In conclusion, this film probably earns the award for the stupidest, worst, most cringe worthy title but it is not that bad. It is average at best and boring at worst. Would I recommend it? I won’t discourage someone from watching it but I wouldn’t endorse it either.