Love Regardless

The first 20-30 minutes of this movie was a struggle! When I say struggle I mean knees bleeding, ankle shot, crawling on granite STRUGGLE. I was hard pressed to just exit and give up. I mean why now? Why do I have to watch this movie? W-wh-WHYYYY? And then the 30 minute mark passed and a miracle happened. The movie did a complete 180!

Love Regardless is the story of a struggling musician, who also happens to be a law-graduate, and her love affair with her best friend’s father. I will tell you this much though, the first 30 minutes of the movie had absolutely nothing to do with any of that. The first 30 minutes was a lot of her struggling, and the viewers struggling to find motivation to continue to watch her struggling, if you catch my drift. 

The movie does not really start until the character of Peter arrives. Peter is the older man who falls in love with our struggling musician, and she with him. Unfortunately or fortunately he is also the father to her best friend. So I guess you can call this movie, ghallywood/nollywood’s attempt at “American Beauty” just without the weird high school/secondary school students angle (which, in retrospect, is probably a good thing because I don’t think the African audience is ready yet – God knows I’m not). Nollywood has seen many of the older man/younger lady dynamics before, however, it is hardly ever as fleshed out as “Love Regardless”. And that’s not to say that Love Regardless should win all the awards for development, but the previous stories with this theme that we’d see in nollywood were mainly the runz girls and sugar daddy type.

To be quite honest, the only thing that was great about the movie was the storyline. The romance between both characters carried us from scene to scene but if anyone would ever stop and notice, the first thing that stands out is the poor acting going on. I was fortunate/unfortunate (it’s all about perspective) to watch some of the scenes twice and I’d have to say that the second time around, without the initial surprise that comes with the first time, the poor performances were glaring. If the movie did not have the music coaxing it along, this would have been a difficult movie to watch. Zynell presented her character well enough but there was still gaps in her performance. Gbenga Titiloye who plays Peter carries it flawlessly to the unassuming eye but in reality there was still room for improvement here as well. On the second watch, it seemed like the actors were just speaking on cues instead of responding to the other character – so when one person finished talking, the next person starts talking. Titloye did however bring that RMD charm to this storyline that keeps the viewer pushing on.

For what the movie lacked in acting, it made up for in music. All the scenes that would have met their pitfall because of weak performances were elevated because of the great choices in music.