Make A Move

“Don’t you dare tell me about love for dance, don’t even try it. That’s the one thing that makes me forget about how broke I am, or how messed up my family is, or how stressful my whole life is, do you hear?” Lines like that with the music in trailers just reel you in for an emotional experience. The thing is those lines, no matter how uplifting they sound in the trailer, do not always have the same effect in the movie itself.

Make a Move tells the story of a young girl living with her mother and her stepfather. Her mother adamantly refuses to see her stepfather for the devil he is, instead she clings to his every word disbelieving everything her daughter says. The daughter, Osas played by Ivie Okujaye, realizes that things are not going to change until she takes the bulls by the horns. Therefore, she goes out finds a job and takes it upon herself to care for and protect her younger sister Esosa.

One thing this movie does incredibly well is to get straight to the point. No time is wasted on the preliminaries or ideas that are not central but can be alluded to within the story. The movie starts at a strong point and continues to build on that. More than 50% of the cast consists of skilled actors so the downfall is definitely not in performances. Even the less seasoned actors in this movie seemed comfortable in their own skin.

Ivie Okujaiye becomes the character whenever she performs. You might argue that you don’t believe 100% of her body movements but when she speaks, you forget all others and focus on her. She carries the emotions in her voice. When she looks in the camera, it’s piercing. Her emotions become the viewers emotions and she does it all so effortlessly.

Beverly Naya can not but get mentioned because this is one role that seemed as though she was born to play it. She was effortless as the conceited spoilt dancer in the first half, and was convincing as an accepting team mate in the latter. The cast complemented themselves beautifully, and of course none of us mind the cameo from the beautiful Majid Michel.

The major flaw of this movie comes with its presentation of the emotions. Its in the music, its in the directing, its in the atmosphere that the movie sets or doesn’t set earlier on. In the first third of the movie, the direction seemed haphazard. It was almost as though the fast-paced scenes were happening faster than the camera could follow, if that was intentional it did not come off as skilled nor did it help the mood.

Speaking of the mood, also in the first third of the movie it was difficult to decipher how the mood was going to be set. There was too much of an attempt to get the audience to feel sad, pity and sorrow without actually letting the story do the work. The ‘pity me please’ lines came too soon, even then they were masked with too-loud please-pity-our-heroine music, and at points where you’d think music would be used it wasn’t. The query is not against using music nor is it against using silence, but if you are going to use one or the other or both, do it well.

After those first 20-40 minutes, the direction improves and I assume so does the music – either that or we just get used to it. Make a move is definitely not the best we can do in that genre, but it’s one of the better ones. Its major downfall though was an attempt to use other aspects of the movie to carry the emotions when the actors were fully capable of doing it themselves if used correctly.