Tough Love

Tough Love was a tough sell! It’s a movie you want to like because it has all the right elements but together, just like Okro soup cooked with cinnamon, it just doesn’t sit well.

Tough Love is the story of a rebellious American trained son, Obaloluwa (played by Joshua Richard) who is left behind in Abeokuta by his mother during their visit to his grandmother. This act is a desperate attempt by his parents to reform him and change him from his substance dependence ways. If you have seen the movie or the trailer for What Will People Say then this will feel similar.

The first thing that hits you is the novelty of it. It’s not a storyline or a branch of this storyline that many Nigerian filmmakers are exploring, so it’s exciting. At first you want to laud the parents for coming up with this idea and actually executing it (and if you’ve spent any amount of time with overly entitled second generation African kids in the west, then you’re also hoping that it succeeds). Then eventually it might hit you that this probably falls under some form of ‘kidnap’ or violation of ‘rights’, but we go right along with it.

In the first few scenes, as Obaloluwa is finding his baring, you almost start to feel bad for him and feel frustrated right along with him until you don’t. As scene after scene passes, it starts to feel like a repetitive drag. The scenes might add to the story but they don’t inspire you to keep watching. Then somewhere along this path we draw nearer to the end and then the love story becomes a thing and you wonder to yourself when this happened. It was obvious throughout the movie that the characters of Oba and Monike would end up in a romantic relationship – even by looking at the poster alone – but when it arrives on screen, we aren’t quite ready for it. In one scene you see Oba saying to Monike, “I would never hurt you” and you start to scratch your head wondering why he is empowered to hurt her and when their relationship evolved into such a commitment.

But then you accept it, however, even then their actual relationship is also a hard sell. This is for a few reasons centered mostly around the performances. Joshua Richard plays our male lead here and even though his smile is endearing and his persona makes you want to love him, his acting is nowhere near where it needs to be. It is nowhere near the skill level required to pull off the kind of conviction the character requires, nor is it anywhere near strong enough to hold the attention of an audience for the amount of time that he is required to. For this reason, the house that is this movie is built on begins to crumble from its central part – the protagonist.

Then there is our love interest, Monike. Monike is played by the beautifully talented Bolaji Ogunmola. Ogunmola manages to convince you of her character’s innocence and ideals in her first few solo scenes, but in her moments with Richard, I have a hard time believing anything. It’s hard in those moments to believe that she is the 21 year old and he is older than her because the entire time they’re together I see him as a kid and her as his elder. And no matter how hard I try to shake it off, it persists. There are one or two scenes in total where Richard’s romantic attempts actually hit their mark, but for the most part they fall flat.

The real star of this movie though is Grandma! The character of the grandmother is played superbly by Vivian Metchie and is honestly the fuel that keeps this movie running with her effortless delivery.

The experience of watching Tough Love is, as already mentioned, a tough one that is made even tougher by the lack of subtitles for the many many Yoruba speaking scenes.