Mum, Dad Meet Sam
Joseph Benjamin, Daniella Down, A Dot Comedian, Edith Nwekenta, Helen Gold, Anthony Ofoegbu
The movie unveils Josiah Abiola (Joseph Benjamin) who is at the peak of his career. The only thing left is to find the perfect girl to settle down with, and Samantha Smith (Daniella Down) is stunning, intelligent, and pretty much fits the picture.
Both meet and fall in love and might just be perfect for each other. He decides to take her home to meet his family…in Nigeria.
What is meant to be a special occasion turns out to be their worst nightmare. Throw in a cocktail of the devious ex-girlfriend Morenike (Edith Nwekenta), an over protective, over dramatic mother (Helen Gold), and the fact that Sam is… ENGLISH, then you have a recipe for an explosive and disastrous encounter ripe with awkwardness and hilarity.
1hr 34mins
TS Ukpo
Segilola Ogidan and Edith Nwekenta.
2015
Can I be honest with you? I hit play on this movie because of Daniella Down – aka “Deadre/The White Girl” from ‘The Wedding Party‘ movie. And that connection was the last exciting thing about this movie.
Mum, Dad, Meet Sam is the Nigerian take on “Guess Who” except the similarity in storyline is all that they manage to share in common. Even though both movies could technically be dubbed comedies, only one was funny (and you get one guess at which it was) and only one was immersive.
MDMS drops the ball with so many different aspects of the film that it almost becomes silly to keep up after a point. The entire thing feels like a skit with unrehearsed lines. And here when we say ‘unrehearsed lines’, we don’t mean because it comes naturally to the actors but because sometimes it seems like they are still rehearsing while the director is shooting. And while we are on the matter of the directing, why does this whole thing feel like a stage play? Except a stage play is more enchanting.
Then there is the comedy aspect. We haven’t seen forced comedy of this calibre in a while and MDMS does not attempt to hide it. In the first half, our comic relief is in the form of Fola, Josiah’s UK friend. The only problem is that Fola is more irksome than he is funny. You seem him attempt to tell a joke but you watch that joke fall flat time and time again. Then we come back to ‘Nigeria’ and our comic relief is in the form of Morenike. Morenike is the villain to our lovey-dovey-mixed-race couple. You should hate villains but the performance of the actor doesn’t even inspire you to emote all the way to hatred. At best this character is irritating and that’s it.
The storyline goes exactly as you would expect it to go and the ending credits honestly couldn’t have come any sooner.
