In Every Way

In Every Way is the story of a secretary/personal assistant, Mabel (Lota Chukwu) who falls in love with her rude and disrespectful boss, Dominic (Frederick Leonard). He changes women and staff like underwear and has no regards whatsoever for anyone but for some reason she is insanely attracted to him and chooses to stay with him despite this.

If you have read the synopsis (or even just seen the poster), then you already know how this one ends. If you are still unable to guess then here’s our SPOILER ALERT because there are many spoilers coming your way. You can divide this movie into three parts: the first part where his arrogance and disrespect is on display for the world in the office, the second part where he has to work from home after the accident and dates Kelly, then the third part where Mabel tries to get him to fall for her. The most watchable of all three parts was possibly the last, and even that could just be because you get used to it.

The storyline is cliched, it’s unoriginal and entirely too predictable but you already knew that. The salvation of these sort of ‘shameless’ romance films are the performances and the actual scene-to-scene content. Unfortunately, In Every Way was vacuous in this department as well. It was like some sort of constant competition between the overacting, unimaginative lines, and unrealistic characters for who could loose the audience’s attention fastest.

Speaking of unrealistic characters, there was Mabel. The character of Mabel is like nothing I have ever seen in nollywood before. She is not a villain but you might find yourself feeling villain-like things towards the character. I guess you can’t say the movie was completely unoriginal because this manifestation of the overly indulged, lacking standards, throw herself at a disrespectful man – manner of a woman is one that’s fairly unseen before. It was painful watching her in scene after scene make her emotions overly obvious, continue to be trampled and yet continue to come back and continue to intrude into his private spaces with reckless abandon. The thought of young girls watching this and seeing the character of Mabel and feeling like it’s right (because she gets the man in the end), is actually mortifying. Ironically, the character of Kelly – who plays the sexy physiotherapist with an agenda – was easier to comprehend and to like than our lead female.

Then there was the overacting. Frederick and Lota are probably good in other works, but here they just seemed to be feeding off each other’s over dramatizing energies. In one scene, Frederick will come too close to her body for comfort and be staring into her soul like some psychopathic killer (I guess that’s what we call romance) and Lota on the other hand will respond with big eyes like it’s a shine shine bobo contest. The “un-believability” factor was abounding.

But this lack of belief started in the first few seconds of the movie. In the beginning, you want to like this movie as you are introduced to this snobbish rich man who even has a suited butler with an obsessive hanky. However, by the third scene or so when he’s in the back seat of his car pulling out his purple laptop that is bedazzled with apple stickers, then you are hard pressed to believe anything. You learn the importance of a great director here. It’s a story you want to like because even though it’s made on a low budget, the right director could turn that around easily (think “Tiwa’s Baggage“). The right director would make sure every shot counted, would compensate for the lack of physical grandeur in their final presentation. The right director would not allow for 99% of the acting in this movie to be forced.

In the end, In Every Way is a cute story that you want to like but the movie won’t let you like it in peace.