Diva

Diva, written by Israel Eziedo and produced by Efe Irele, tells the story of Nora (Efe Irele) who embarks on a professional exercise meant to ease her into a character and after a few days stumbles upon a truth she had been oblivious of. On its surface, such a movie sounds like a pretty cool and Meta concept, a movie about making movies. So I thought I was in for a wildly entertaining ride but ultimately it was underwhelmingly average which is fascinating considering how overwhelmingly positive audience reviews for the movie seem to be.

At its best moments the movie played like a Disney or Hallmark movie teaching the value of character set to a stirring soundtrack and at its worst it was a boring compilation of montages (No jokes, there was a literally a five minute montage of Nora performing domestic chores set to what might be the worst song in the world).

So let’s do pros and cons.

Pro: the performance by the always exceptional Femi Branch who although was hamstrung by a sincerely boring story, I could probably listen to him say literally anything. Also pro: Efe Irele’s high strung/high maintenance actress routine was unnervingly convincing (although I still have questions about that accent). And finally very pro: The sappy but moving life lecture she gets on love midway into the movie which could have been eye roll worthy if not for the authentic performance of Funsho Adeolu

Now for some cons. Con: Quality wise, the movie gets off to a really rough start. Also con:  pretty bad dialogue littered with corny lines (e.g. “I don’t believe in true love” “are you trying to say that true love is the only source of satisfaction” etc.) Annoyingly con: it does very little to justify its runtime. Meta Con: a painfully boring subplot of love which somehow includes a weird joke about rape. Finally the straw that broke the camel’s back con: 30 minutes in, I had an epiphany on what the climactic plot twist would be and 45 minutes in, I was wishing for the end.