Wicked Love

‘Wicked Love’ belongs to that class of home videos that is simply surprisingly good. It is almost the same recipe used to cook the exact same meal but a twitch in the ingredients or a switch up in the order and presentation created that something that is… well, something worth sitting through part 1 and part 2.

In ‘wicked love’, the son of a billionaire, Denise, lives a sheltered life of comfort with his girlfriend he has been dating from secondary school and his job that he acquired from his father. He decides to propose to said girlfriend, Vivian, in keeping with his ‘good son’ timeline and so he does. However, after the proposal he meets Mayowa, his “fire” that he refuses to “hide under a bushel”. In fact in one scene he describes her by saying “she is my ice, and I am her mountain. She is my water, and I am her fountain. When we’re together everything melts”. Oh such adorable… what the heck does that even mean? Moving on.

But while this new found love between Mayowa and Denise is melting ice and building mountains, it’s also bringing pain to others – Vivian. Vivian is played by Tessy Oragwa, an actress who it seems has now exhausted her time in supporting actress roles and is gradually moving towards lead roles. Tessy could still do with some control of the emotions on her face but she does a really good job of pretending as though she can. However, her scene with Oge shows who the real ‘queen bee’ is because whilst Oge is effortless, Tessy just might be struggling a little. This is no indictment on her performance. She does a fair job but there is definitely room for improvement.

On the other hand Mike Ezuruonye is simply a delight to watch – for anyone – for whatever your reason may be.  The chemistry between himself and Oge might not have been as poignant as it was meant to be in scenes where they were in the frame together, but it has a stronger ‘believability’ factor when they are speaking of each other in absentia.

The appeal of the movie is not in originality or uniqueness, it’s simply the presentation and the little changes. One major thing that makes it stand out is that, even though there is an obvious antagonist from scene one, the character you’d love to hate is not the set up as someone to hate. The audience that is used to hating a character set up as a husband snatcher, doesn’t really have anything to hate because for once in our movies we have given ‘the other woman’ substance.

The real treasure in the movie, however, is Moyo Lawal. Opening scene has her strutting in jack-and-the-beanstalk level heels and an obviously-too-short-you-might-as-well-be-naked bodycon dress. Immediately we are led to think, “here we go again, Moyo is a runz girl”. But her character has been given depth, fabric, and for once a real story.

Regardless of the length – which is not up to 3 hours for both parts – the movie holds your attention from start to finish. The question in the movie is not ‘who’ but ‘why’, and not only is the answer satisfactory but the journey there is not a let down. However, the movie is not without its faults. The audio quality is the biggest let down of the entire movie. Looking past that though, the movie is definitely worth the watch.