Wo.Men Are Scum

The title of this film was its most attractive feature initially. For those who don’t know, just like “sho mo age mi ni” and “I go change am for you”, “men are scum” was one of the ‘trendy’ sayings of 2019 on Nigerian social media platforms. And for those who are wondering, it takes exactly 60 minutes into the runtime of this movie for one of the characters to quote it.

Wo.Men Are Scum is a cute little film that checks off every possible romantic drama trope there is (short of maybe an airport scene). Rude boss – check, awkward meeting – check, miscommunications – check, rude exes – check, overly enthusiastic family member/friend – check check, rich boy and poor girl – check check check. You can’t possibly convince me that even the cast members did not find themselves rolling their eyes at the lack of originality here.

In this movie, Uzoamara (because who needs one first name when you can have two in one) gets dumped by a rude patriarchal ex because she chooses to accept a job offer at another man’s company. She then starts at this other man’s company and immediately falls for him. He also falls for her at first sight, and his natural response to that is to be cruel to her because his ex was scum and all women are scum – duh. His mom notices the “love in his eyes” (because you know, mothers are specially talented) then takes it upon herself to be the cupid of this love story.

It’s all so unapologetically unoriginal but it’s still so overwhelmingly endearing and much of that is thanks to Uzor Arukwe. I would love to share the compliment amongst all cast members, and while the supporting cast was far from terrible and Ijeoma was pretty decent, it was the Uzor moments that truly brought on the butterfly effect. And no, it’s not because of his looks because he has always looked this way even with his non-romantic roles – which was all we used to know him for. In those movies, we never thought of him as any sort of knight in shining armor. Therefore, we must give credit to him for flipping the script here and going all Ramsey Nouah on us to perfection.

There’s not much else to say about the movie. It’s entirely unoriginal, cinematographically deficient but still pleasant to watch. In the end, how much you are able to enjoy this movie is directly proportional to how good you are at turning off your brain.