Tripod

There are some movies in Nigeria that as certain as the sky is blue will always have an audience. Some of these cliché sure bangers include a) the prince and the poor girl set in the village romances, b) the evil mother-in-law thrillers and c) the crazy house girl dramas. Tripod starring Ruth Kadiri, Esther Audu and Kenneth Okolie appears at first to be a C (Crazy house girl drama). So like any good Nigerian while rolling my eyes and muttering “do we really need another house girl movie”, I promptly sat down to watch. The remarkable thing, at the end of the movie, I was left wishing they had just stuck to the cliché.

The movie is supposed to be about a cheating husband whose wife hires a house help with whom he cheated on his wife with. However for some indecipherable reason, this is only dealt with in the first half of the movie so much so that the film begins to feel like a compressed old Nollywood Part 1&2 story into 90 minutes and so I am going to review the movie in as Part One and Part Two.

Part One: It started decently by exploiting familiar and amusing themes through the movie, the unfaithful Nigerian husband, the beautiful wife scolding the husband, the vengeance seeking one-night stand etc. It also hints at heavier themes like post natal depression then proceeds to spectacularly mess it up in Part two. At this point Kenneth Okolie gives the most convincing performance as the husband with Esther Audu underwhelming due to the constraints of the story. On the other hand, Ruth Kadiri who both produces and stars in it gives an indifferent performance that left me feeling perhaps a more hands off approach might have been better.

The plot on the other had was completely riddled with so many holes that I am just going to phrase them as questions. 1) What wife insists the maid stays when you husband wants her to go? 2) Why did this conversation “She has to go. Why. She tried to hit on me when I saw her. Please get her out…. Fin.” never happen 3) What is the whole point of this movie? And as if that wasn’t bad enough the film then excessively relies on banal dialogue to fill plot holes.

Part Two: I have to start with an appeal because at this point the movie gets partially confusing and completely horrid. So writers/producers/directors, I plead with you in the name of Nollywood Deity Pete Edochie, stop introducing nonsensical stories all in the name of a plot twist. Just stop it! The second half of the movie completely goes off the rails and was a resounding disappointment turning an ordinary movie into one that’s unsure of what it wants to be/what it wants to do/how it wants to do it. The only silver lining of this scatter-brained portion was the performance by Esther Audu.

At the end, Tripod which could have been a regular cliché about the dangers of attractive maids sadly becomes a cliché about what happens when a simple story is overcomplicated to the extent you begin to wonder “Wait what?”