Adebola ‘Illrymz’ Olowu, Oreka Godis, Gbemi Olateru-Olagbegi, Chris Attoh, Timi Charles-Fadipe, Unamka Marycolette, Yewande Lawal, Sarah Boulos and Theo Lawson
It’s interesting. It’s ridiculous but it’s fascinating.
You mean you are really going to make an entire series out of the premise that one guy wants to give his mother a gift of having her see him get married before he dies? So his friends get in on it and they start to go over a list of all his exes to find the perfect wife material because, you know, the way to find your future is always to look in your past and ish.
When you get past the moment of ridiculousness of the premise and start to pay attention to the actual series, the first thing that hits you about “Our Best Friend’s Wedding” are the performers. The three lead roles are headed by On-Air Personalities (OAPs), so is this really about the acting? Or is this a PR stunt?
You spend episode 1 and maybe episode 2 wondering about this and every week when a new episode is released you wonder why you are actually watching it. I will tell you what it’s not:
It’s not because the performances are so breathtaking that they make the characters seem real to you time and time again. It’s definitely NOT that! Especially considering that Adebola ‘Illrymz’ Olowu who plays the male lead, Charles Effiong, has a harder time convincing himself of who his character is that he doesn’t even try to convince the audience.
It’s not because the storyline is ever so amazing that you can’t help but wonder what is going to happen in the next episode. It’s actually funny because the one time the show attempted a cliffhanger (aka where the bestfriend has an incident in the tub) was the first time that I went from 100% to 110% certainty that it was time for me to drop the series.
The stories that did work were annoyingly under-explored in this show – at least in this season. Topping that list is the Chris Attoh (Tunde) and Oreka Godis (Jade) storyline. There is a wealth of drama to be unfoiled when a great writer sits down and actual actors are allowed to enact what happened to Oreka’s character, when she fell in love with Charles, how she’s made herself believe that she doesn’t love him all these years while still loving him and how she’s become hard on the outside. We can even delve into her new relationship and deal with under explored emotional terrains (at least for Nollywood) of how she and her new love try to work through this.
The show starts to go into this but gets derailed by (what I imagine as) an annoying buzzing sound in one of the writer’s ears telling him/her to go back to Charles’ storyline – Charles storyline is not that fascinating! Bruh is a confused man and the actor who is playing him does nothing to help the audience like him/understand him.
However, after episode 3 it happens! You get used to the performances. You fully embrace the leave-your-brain-at-home mechanism. You get used to sub-par and you invest in these characters… because quite frankly “Skinny Girl in Transit” is off the air and we have to make do with something.
Once you start to get used to it, you no longer notice the amount of potential that is lost in this show. The skill of the cinematographer does not appear wasted anymore but instead it seems like it is in beat, the Lagos scenes draw you in and you might leave here wanting to become an OAP.
Then there was the music. I have an entire new playlist thanks to this show. This is possibly the only part of the “Our Best Friend’s Wedding” experience that doesn’t require you to ask less questions. We thank the stars for the person who selects the music because even though in some parts, the great music overwhelms the shoddy performances, it’s still great music that you can take with you after the episode is over.
At the end of the season, we are left with a cliffhanger of whether Jade will go through with the wedding to Tunde; or if like a confused/stereotypical TV female lead she decides to run to her “true love” who has a clear track record of making foolish decisions and only decided to confess his feelings for her after someone else came and took away his favorite toy.
I watched this and then I read the comments and saw everyone praising it and couldn’t understand why. The production was top notch. The music AMAZING! I might even be able to look away as to the acting cus Oreka did a great job but the story….no no no. I’m not sure if it’s that half of the series was edited out or it just didn’t come out as the scriptwriter intended but that story was here, there and everywhere. I watched till the end hoping that there was some kind of build up in the works. Promise was just there for decoration. The Tega storyline died a natural death. Onome’s character was so confused and so was I as I watched her. The thing about having a patient’ s drug in his mum’ house. I’m genuinely saddened by how much potential was wasted in this. I’m praying season 2 is better and not as much material is left on the editing floor or wherever they kept it this time.
OMG we looovvvveee your comment, Nky!!! It just covers everything so succinctly. It’s everything.
After watching four episodes I gave up on this webseries, I didn’t know what I was watching so, I stopped anticipating new episodes.
Lol @ “didn’t know what I was watching”. I gave up on looking for content after a while.