Chief Daddy

When you go to see a movie in a cinema, you can only really feel one of two things. You either (a) feel fortunate that you saw the movie because it was good (and before the internet gave you its entire plot) or (b) you feel unfortunate that you left your house, went somewhere and wasted three hours of your life. This was some place in

Chief Daddy, written by Bode Asinyanbi and directed by Niyi Akinmolayan centres on the family of billionaire industrialist, Chief Beecroft. If I wanted to extensively discuss individual performance, this review would be endless because the cast of this movie is in itself an entirely galaxy, with stars like Funke Akindele, Zainab Balogun, Ini Edo, Dakore Egbuson-Akande, Kate Henshaw, Richard Mofe-Damijo, Falz, Beverly Naya, Chioma ‘Chigul’ Omeruah, Rachel Oniga, Beverly Osu, Nkem Owoh, Patience Ozokwor, Joke Silva and so on. So I’m just going to highlight my favorite performances.

Falz was actually impressive and every time he opened his mouth in this movie, the crowd went wild. The Nkem Owoh and Patience Ozokwor combination was as iconic as ever and provided some of the most hilarious scenes in the movie. Rachel Oniga was exceptional as that Yoruba aunt that everybody has and loves, and Joke Silva was close to perfect as the emotional center of the movie.

Honorable mentions: In their brief cameos, RMD was as usual trying to seduce the audience with his eyes and even Uti Nwachukuwu was hilarious in his 60 odd seconds on screen.

The production, direction, setting, costumes and soundtrack were well done. Personally, the best part of the film has to be the inspired choice it makes to include itself in the universe of Ebonylife Show “Castle”  which implies the creation of  a Marvel-like universe  filled with Ebonylife characters.

As a whole, the movie does have its shortcomings. Most significantly, an underwhelming story and distinctly one-dimensional (slightly unlikable) characters. It’s not the greatest of stories because I suspect the big premise was supposed to be charming but just felt weird to me (although to be fair, the entire cinema awwnned while I cringed). It sometimes felt like the story was an adaptation of a bad play with the movie going through a brief rough spell at the start and ending in an unsatisfying way.

Also it sticks to the familiar “Wedding Party” formula- an event (wedding, death etc.) + All Star cast + Humor = Two hours of entertainment.  Finally, if there is any offence like having too many stars, this movie is guilty of it, because there was no role occupied by someone who could not headline a movie themselves, which leaves little room for upcoming actors in minor roles.

#ChiefDaddyMovie

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