Rain of Hope

A few weeks ago, I saw a Yul Edochie movie again for the first time in forever (I believe the movie was “Circle of Trust“). Then I asked,”where has Yul been hiding?” And someone snidely replied, “in all the Asaba movies that you have refused to watch”. So I accept my shade and I accepted the challenge, so I went to the Asaba movies to find Yul and here we are.

Rain of Hope follows the story of a prince, played by our eternal prince – Yul Edochie, as he is preparing to get married to his childhood friend, played by Ruth Kadiri. As preparations are ongoing, he begins to realize that he might not actually love her. So he does the princely thing and attempts to break up with her and then proceeds to dress himself up as a common man and go out into the village in disguise (as all princes do when it’s time to get married according to nollywood).

On the first of these trips (because you know things always fall in place the first time) he meets his ex-fiance’s sister, unbeknownst to him (I think I need an award for finally being able to correctly use that word), played by Chioma Chukwuka-Akpotha. He eventually falls for her and decides that he wants to marry her.

This is not the only thing going on in this movie, on the side we have an overly ambitious stepmother of a queen, we have a wicked step mother and some other things. In essence, we have all the basic ingredients for a Cinderella story. So needless to say, the appeal of this movie is not in its originality.

The appeal is in the basics. Even though the movie has six parts when it could have easily had just one (I mean the entire first part of the movie – all 40 minutes – was just character introductions), it still manages to appeal at the most basic level. The music has that village flavor that reminds you of what nollywood sounds like and the village setting just manages to put us all at ease.

But the real winners in this movie are the actors. They embody their characters so well that you almost don’t mind the length and the unoriginality of it all. Prince  Yul Edochie has played this part so many times that you can tell he can almost do this in his sleep. Ruth Kadiri is effortless as the spoilt sister and Chioma falls comfortably into the role of the demure pure sister.

Clearly the movie had its flaws like lack of originality, uncontrolled background noises, that yeye shine-shine clothes they have the royal family wearing and the unnecessary length of it all, but it was still an easy and delightful watch thanks to the actors involved.