The Date

I no go lie you. I hit play on this movie because I thought it was a romance. After a few minutes, I quickly realized how wrong I was.

The Date is the story of yet another day in a married man’s life. He leaves home in the morning rushing to work as his wife chastizes for working on yet another birthday. When he gets to work, he is met with an angry boss, a seductress of a co-worker and somewhere in there a phone call telling him that his wife is cheating on him.

The movie was not a ‘romance’ it was a ‘drama’, but it was not just that. It was in the category of what I have come to believe is the most annoying genre of dramas which is the ‘series of unfortunate events’ kind. In the beginning a few bad things were happening to our lead character, played wonderfully well by Okey Uzoeshi. The things were not so dramatic that you would begin to wonder. It was yet another day in Lagos.

However, somewhere after the mid-point the series of unfortunate events caught fire and it was at this point that I realized that I might just be wasting 72 minutes of my life on this movie. I decided to hold out and have a little bit of faith in the names involved in making this movie (what with a screenplay by Rita Onwurah and cast including Ashionye).

This Part of the review contains spoilers

At some point though, especially with ‘series of unfortunate events’ type stories you begin to wonder “what could possibly be the reason behind all of this”? Then you remember that insignificant bit of detail in the beginning of the movie where the leads wife was wishing him a happy birthday.

At the end of it all, it turned out that this was all a part of a big fat surprise party…. Olorun Maje! I reject this kind of surprise party in my life in Jesus name (if you like don’t say ‘amen’).

End of spoilers

After the midpoint, the movie does begin to feel like it has no focus because we cannot see where it is headed (I realize this is part of the suspense, but not many are motivated enough to see it through). The movie had decent enough performances from all parties involved. One major production flaw was the audio quality of the movie that kept coming in and going out.