It’s Her Day

In It’s Her Day, popular comedian Bovi takes on Nollywood and the Nigerian wedding industry together at the same time. His debut movie tells the story of a recently wealthy (or about to be wealthy) young man who proposes to his girlfriend, a daughter of a billionaire. Soon afterwards he is saddled with the responsibility of keeping up with the Joneses that comes along with the role.

It would be impossible to talk about this movie while taking it seriously. In fact, it’s impossible to watch this movie and take it completely seriously. This is a “leave your brain at home” “no-holds-barred” “mocking the system” type of comedy and its best enjoyed as such. However, these sort of storylines work best when the director, cinematographer and writer do a convincing job of pulling the audience into an alternate universe. An alternate universe where the hyperbolic actions of our lead female and her supporters (aka her sisters and her mother) make sense and are believable. Unfortunately, 70-80% of the time here, that was not the case. So while you laugh at the humor, you still find yourself wondering ‘sane’ things like “why is the male lead even putting himself through this?” “where is he getting the money to fund this?” and “how does any of this make any sense?”.

It doesn’t! It makes no sense and no one is trying to convince you that it should. It’s an undertoned satire in the sense that it seems recognizable but we’ll keep calling it a satire because we – the sane people – refuse to believe people live like this. As a comedy, It’s Her Day is filled with multiple small laughs that occasionally deliver, and a few big laughs (especially the celebrity phone call scene) that definitely deliver. As a comedy it’s a hit. As a story, it is filled with many loop holes and a lack of effort in writing. For instance, there is little to no work done in building up the character of Victor’s Ex and the history between them, instead it’s just left there as a convenient backup plan. There is also the question of how the lead two are in a relationship or how they could possibly have anything beyond physical and financial attraction between them. But then again, that’s a case of overthinking in a storyline where you should leave your brain at home.

All the actors involved in this got the memo and delivered accordingly. I’m a bit peeved at how Gregory Ojefua and all his talent was under-used here, but we had Toni Tones and Shaffy Bello to make up for it. Tones and Bello were experts at the snob roles and while Bovi stumbled along scenes that required anything aside humor, he had the funny scenes down. That aside, there is no gaping performance hole in this film that will keep you from enjoying it.

All in all, It’s Her Day is a light comedy that will bring on the laughs, and it’s one best watched without taking too seriously.