Folly

Those who truly desire to do great things are unhindered by excuses or the perceived barriers of the status quo.

Folly is the story of a seemingly dysfunctional family of three – one mother and two daughters. The mother, played by Joke Silva, spots alcohol as her favorite accessory much to the dismay of her daughters – especially the newlywed, Alice. On the wedding day, the mother gets drunk again and faints such that the couple have to carry her along to their honeymoon. Truths begin to unravel at this venue that explain why she is the way she is.

Folly is not an uber original concept but then again what is originality? The movie has an interesting enough mix of suspense and drama to keep you captivated past the pretty faces and celebrity line-up. It had the makings of a movie that would drag, but fortunately someone had the common sense to keep the story rolling. The movie is told in in-media-res style which means that the movie begins in the middle of the story and the beginning of the story is in the middle of the movie (…take all the time you need to grasp that lol). This style of storytelling for this particular story type is not that original but it worked for this movie.

The movie was led by a strong group of lead actors from Joke Silva to Belinda Effah. The most impressive performance was of course aunty Joke who begins to let on that she is playing an older Uche Jombo by her mannerisms. If you pay any attention to her gestures pre-flashback you can see the similarities. Asides from the strong leads, another thing well done was the props in the flashbacks. They were well suited to the time and was quite impressive.

However, the pitfalls of the movie comes with the camera and most of the people involved with it. In this movie, the unnecessary angles and changing of angles was too noticeable and too unnecessary to be ignored. It did not add anything to the final value of the movie. I almost started to count the amount of scenes that ended with unnecessary angle changes that were supposed to add an “artistic feel” to the directing but didn’t. There was also the last scene at the hotel where the camera was shaking as well as the failed burning house graphics and unintentionally hilarious Alexx-Ekubo-as-running-man shot.

Folly is definitely worth your time, in fact it might be for you a movie to return to time and time again.