Stop

Do you remember those health classes from way back when you were in school? Or the PSA (Public safety announcements) you hear on the radio and see on billboards. How did you feel about them? Because that will determine to a large extent how you feel about this movie. For me, they were useful, maybe illuminating sometimes. What they never were was entertaining or fun, or something you would dedicate an hour of your life to watch. This movie was a not so subtle hybrid of an intro to Sex-Ed class and a PSA and while on some level but I realize like all classes and PSA’s, it was for a good cause. Sometimes though a good cause does not translate into a good movie.

The movie “Stop” (2015) starring Belinda Effah and IK Ogbonna focuses on a distraught woman who has just been told she has HIV, a soon to be married couple who decide to go for genotype testing and loud mouthed slum dweller who is about to be evicted making risky choices that alter the landscape of their futures. Some movies are guilty of having trailers that deceive an audience into expecting more than it has to offer, I could argue this synopsis is guilty of the same crime because even though it does a pretty good job of telling you what happens in it, what it doesn’t tell you is how much you won’t care. The movie tackles issues such as sickle cell anemia, HIV and so on with three independent but ultimately interconnected stories with a local radio station playing the role of omniscient narrator. A move I remain unsure of its category, was it a stroke of genius or ridiculous? What I do know is that it is ridiculously entertaining.
The most fascinating aspect of this movie was that it tackles the Nigerian societies crippling fear of and its simultaneous ignorance and disregard for contagious diseases. We are introduced to our in-love newlyweds and although their performance as two almost newlyweds a week to the wedding was honest it made me sometimes want to scream at the screen while another montage of them played, that yes, we get it. They are in love. And it is too good to be true. However convincing their infatuation though, I found their subplot simply unbelievable.

It then opens up to a shot of Belinda Effah curled up in a ball crying in her bed before an abrupt glam-up session. Her best scenes were the moments where we got to watch her struggle with her internal grief. In those moments we realized that her character could have been so much more than the caricature we watched. This is because although I’m not entirely sure at what point I got thoroughly disengaged from her story, I suspect it was when she turned towards the camera and said something that’s made her seem more like a bad James Bond villain than anything else.

We move from the intensity of Belinda to the comic relief of Piro (don’t call me Peter), the street hustler. It was at this point I realized that deftly handling multiple stories is no easy feat and even though the director gives it his best shot, figuring out the tone of the movie was also no easy feat. IK Ogbonna is convincing in his role as the streetwise Piro and although he spends a disturbing amount of time talking to himself, I initially found myself fully engaged in his mundane challenges. (The quest for toothpaste, His ducking of debts.) Until they became more absurd and less funny. Truthfully I wasn’t sure what I was watching at some moments. Maybe you would have better luck.

In its defense, the movie did end on a pretty wild and great note for the movie goer who loves plot twists, (Does it count as a plot twist if you heard it over the radio?) but ultimately fails to live up to its potential. How do I know this? I found myself halfway through wondering when it would “Stop”.