A Love Story

In “A Love Story” a young couple discover secrets as their marriage progresses that could potentially cause the end of their relationship.

I have thought of how to write this review without spoilers but it might prove to be too difficult so please from this point on take note of the

SPOILER ALERT

There are many aspects of this movie that deserve attention so I will attempt to touch on every single one of them. First of all the writing and the storyline. If there is one true kudos that this movie honestly deserves completely, it is for the writing and the unpredictable nature of the movie. I say ‘unpredictable’ and I mean that loosely and I’ll explain.

The movie can honestly be divided into two portions – before he moves on from being an assassin and afterwards. Afterwards you assume that the movie is over but then you look at the run-time and see all the time that is left and start to wonder what could possibly be remaining. It is at this point that many thinking people would be able to put two and two together and realize just how this movie ends. Having said that though, tremendous props must be given to the filmmakers for setting it up as such and for inserting the foreshadowing within the movie. Regardless, with many unnecessary scenes and a run time of nearly 2 hours, the movie honestly feels like 2 films put together as one.

While watching the movie there were numerous things that stand out and make you honestly question whether anyone on the sets was paying attention. I should probably mention Jennifer Uzoma’s character sleeping with makeup only to wake up and wash the makeup off so that she can do the dishes? Or the patch-patch hair that is placed on Francis Duru’s head in the name of aging makeup? Or do we talk about how the actress who plays Jennifer’s mom looks about the same age as she does or how Jennifer and Daniel lacked any sort of chemistry during the movie? Or maybe we should have a roundtable discussion to analyze why the heck any character in this movie was mad at the father at the end of the film? – Wetin the guy do?

No! Instead let’s talk about actual concrete matters. For instance, why didn’t we just use Francis and Daniel to play the younger version of themselves (at least the 16 year old version of Ida because that replacement actor was not cutting it in any shape or form). 

And then there was the music. If you decide to look past the darn near blatant theft of the piece, there’s also the persistent jabbering that was sustained throughout the length of the film. We get the idea that the filmmaker wants to create a consistent feel with the music but there’s a certain type of music required for that and it’s much less violent than this pirated piece.

But let’s skip over these and talk about the performances. I have to say that this is probably the best work I have seen from Daniel Lloyd in – ever. This gave him a chance to show us what he truly could do and he did not let the opportunity go to waste. Jennifer struggled a bit in convincing, which was sad to see because after seeing her in so many supporting roles we were really looking forward to seeing her in a lead role. Tina Mba was a force as she always is, I just don’t understand why in her last scenes they had her sitting under the tree without hair. I mean we all mostly guessed she had cancer when she was coughing blood a few scenes prior. But dear nollywood filmmakers, it’s not the cancer itself that causes patient’s to loose their hair – it’s the chemotherapy which she obviously wasn’t getting. 

All in all, A Love Story is best appreciated for what it aims to achieve as opposed to the final material. It’s an honest effort whose true star really is the writer and his or her audacity to think outside the box.