Mama’s Love

All your senses immediately feel that you are in for a treat once you hit play on Mama’s Love. You can immediately tell that it’s a movie where someone was clearly paying attention to the details not just in the direction but also in the casting, the settings, the music and everything in between.

In Mama’s Love, a mother is unable to separate her life misfortune from her son’s existence. She was raped in her youth and that marked the beginning of the series of unfortunate events that would turn out to be her life; because of this, she refuses to acknowledge her son and curses him in every passing moment.

Can we just mention, that not too many actors can scream “YOU ARE NOT MY SON” at their son and still manage to stimulate sympathy for their own character alongside the son’s character. Ebere Okaro, especially in the premier scenes, was an amazing firebrand as Mama in this movie. Michael Godson does a great job in this role in relaying a conflicted son who should hate his mother but still seeks her love and approval in all that he does.

The storyline is a bit shifty at points because you are not really certain where it is going. At the end, I was all but prepared to hate this movie because of the direction it was going in but it managed to save itself at the final moment. There are many points in the story where it feels like the movie could segue and become about so much more or about something else – like the son’s success, or the son’s downward spiral/arrest and turning into a criminal, etc. but the writer stays true and makes a movie centered on one thing – which is very commendable.

Mama’s Love breaks your heart in the beginning and has a tight grip on your emotions and your tears at first (I mean at one point I was even praying for the mother’s character to die), but as the movie goes on the grip loosens. It never completely looses you but it also leaves the feeling that the movie does not completely attain the heights it could have attained.