World of Lust

There was once a phase of nollywood movies when 4 out of every 5 released home videos were set in the college or university and followed the lives of runs girls or cult boys or the SU’s desperately trying to make it through 4 years unscathed. This movie can be seen as a sequel to all movies that fall in that general category.

World of Lust follows three friends from university after their university years and during their travails in the real world. The first character, played by Mercy Johnson, hails from a poor family, is currently jobless and lives with her friends in the city. She rationalizes that since she could not be born into wealth like her two other friends she must marry into wealth – perfect reasoning if you ask me. What could possibly go wrong with that? Hence she sets forth to closely critique any guy that approaches her even to the extent of finding out their bank account balance.

The second character is played by Oma Nnadi. She is a successful and well known nollywood actress (her character) – but yet somehow she is living in a small apartment with two other people – whose sole mission in life is to complete that perfect couple picture by staying fit and finding her a hot guy who has that “swag”. I kid you not, she constantly refers to her dream man as the man with the “swaaaggg”. When you eventually recover from the shock of hearing a full grown adult use that term in 2014 you will also realize that there really isn’t much else to her character asides from her lifelong search for the man with the swag to marry her.

The final character, played by Angel Ufuoma, is what I can only describe as the fairy god mother of all the other characters. She seems to have everything down to the tee and has developed a working formula for the ‘good girls guide to the real world’. There is nothing wrong with her life and when something seems to be wrong she reacts and performs in a manner that’s grossly unrealistic.

The story spirals through the choices of these three and how their choices affect them as they go through life, and if you haven’t guessed it already, the good girl finishes first.

The highlight of this movie really is Walter Anga who plays the importer/exporter igbo businessman with absolutely no clue about the English language. He is no Mekus Delalala from “Blackberry Babes” but he brings much needed humor and relief to the movie by simply being present. This is arguably the best performance I’ve ever seen Anga give.

There are flaws in the settings and costume from a pregnant lady wearing a skirt that doesn’t zip to the housing being inappropriate for the characters that have been created. The flaws don’t stop there but also extend to the directing and camera where the camera man randomly decides to zoom in on the lips, and then quickly to one ear, and then quickly to the eye. If there was ever art in direction, this movie missed the mark by many miles. The story is interesting enough to be watched in the background but giving it your full dedicated attention is simply an attempt to test your body’s sleep mechanism.