Love in Sight

Have you ever seen Cinderella? Okay so imagine Cinderella if a) Cinderella was blind and acted like a ten year old girl trapped in the body of a beautiful adult woman b) the prince was a ripped engineer with a messiah complex who she helped c) the evil stepsisters were a literal evil sister d) the fairy godmother was her literal mother. And voila. You have the movie ‘Love in sight’. And if you still have any doubts, the name of the male lead played by Jimmy Odukoya was literally Prince Odinaka. I rest my case.

The movie ‘Love in Sight’ tells the story of a blind village girl (Chelsea Eze) who goes out of her way to save the life of a stranger whom she unexpectedly falls for. At this point I know what you’re wondering because it was exactly what I wondered myself after reading that synopsis and the answer is yes. This movie will transport you back to 2007 Nollywood complete with the classic love story scored to the forever iconic village soundtrack and deliver a straightforward, uncomplicated and unoriginal plot but with the delightful caveat of the high-level production quality of 2018. The brilliance of this movie, much like the 2018 movie ‘Tripod’, is that as certain as the sky is blue there are some movies in Nigeria that will always have an audience.

There were no standout performances in this movie with perhaps the exception of veteran Nollywood actress Cassandra Odita (Elewechi) who has long perfected the role of the old doting mother. The rest of the cast gives generally competent but sometimes confusing performances. For example, Chelsea Eze’s take on the naïve blind girl translates into a performance that left her character as uncomfortably infantile, Jimmy Odukoya gives a flat performance as her messiah in tight fitting shirts, and Emem Ufot crash-lands as the not so funny comic relief.

This movie could have wrapped up in 30 minutes or less because at the 30th minute mark the movie had gone full circle and I had run out of content to review but rather I was forced to watch unentertaining machinations for the next hour. Now the peculiar thing is that if the comment section and likes are to be believed, the movie is really well liked. Which is odd because it’s not a particularly good movie. Which I suppose proves that some people miss the golden age of Nollywood telling these stories. Which is fair. If you are one of them then this movie is for you. As it happens, I am not.