Clueless

The way the media is set up in modern day, especially the western media, one might actually start to think that the only thing essential for a relationship is love but that’s false. Trust, love and respect are three ingredients that are essential for any relationship to work and in equal amounts. This movie brought that to the forefront.

Clueless is a story that follows one major couple and two other couples in the secondary storyline. The first couple played by Blossom Chukwujekwu and Blessing Obasi have a seemingly great relationship. However, there is tension in their marriage because the wife feels (and ‘is’ – depending on your viewpoint) underappreciated. The next couple played by Uru Eke and Uti Nwachukwu are engaged to be married but the date of the actual event keeps getting postponed because of her busy schedule. The third couple are already in divorce proceedings because the husband neglected the wife to the point where she could no longer take it.

Now when you read “three storylines”, don’t think this is another ‘4 Play‘ or ‘Single & Married‘. Unlike many other movies with secondary storylines where the other storylines are just used to fill space and achieve the required time limit, this one is actually useful. The secondary couples are hardly even ‘secondary’ because they play a crucial part in moving the story along especially for the main couple.

This movie has been made before a decade ago. Nothing new here. However, even though it was the same basic plotline, back then it had a different morale. Previously the storyline was engineered to be a glorification of the male character for desiring a homebred wife, and a condemnation of the female character for daring to desire equality at home and work. Now, however, the storyline is more female centric and actually gives the female character a voice.

The movie had solid performances from some and not so solid performances from others. Blossom Chukwujekwu, Blessing Obasi, Uti Nwachukwu, Iyabo Ojo and Michael Godson gave beautiful performances, however, dare I say that the star of the movie was probably Uru Eke. This is solely because she owned the screen in every frame she was involved in. You felt her character’s point of view (especially initially in the movie when she was still a rational human being) in the movie because you’ve met her character in real life. And she gave life to the character in a way that you know that you have met ‘this lady’, if you yourself are not in fact ‘this lady’.

But of course though, this movie still had a few commas here and there. First of all with the performance of Zainab Sheriff (who plays Vivian, the sister to Blossom’s character). Occasionally she would bring it but then most times, especially in her speaking & emotion scenes, she fell short.

Another huge grievance in this movie was the audio. I don’t know if some people did not get a mic but too many scenes had ifs, buts, or maybes about them. Also, I’m not really certain the voiceovers worked for all the scenes they were used in. And yes, we also noticed that the resolution or conclusion for Uti’s character was quite unsatisfactory.

If you are an active movie viewer this is the movie for you (…or not! Depending on your perspective). By ‘active’, I mean if you are one of us people who have a full conversation with the characters on the screen during the movie. This movie will definitely make you feel irritated at times, annoyed at others and just makes you want to yell at the characters scene after scene.

One great aspect of the storyline of this movie was the source of conflict. It’s a joy to see a nollywood movie marriage that is troubled because of internal reasons. It shows that there are other problems in marriages that are not money or infidelity issues. If the movie ended with the husband cheating (which is the usual nollywood cop out), it would not have been as great a storyline.