Dinner

Released in 2016, Dinner is a close knit story of five people who gather together in the home of two of them – Ade and Lola – during a dinner prior to the wedding of the hosts. Ade and Lola are played by Enyinna and Kehinde, respectively, and gathered in their home is Richie (Deyemi Okanlawon) the vulgar friend of Ade’s, Mikey (Okey Uzoeshi) – an old friend of Ade’s who brings with him his fiance, Dianne (Keira Hewatch).

As the evening goes along, the predictable occurs and they realize that many of them have essentially been with each other. It’s kind of like “The Visit” but with a more predictable outcome of events. However, credit must be given to the writer for managing to take this obvious story and play it out in nearly two hours without ever loosing the audience’s interest. Even though, from the synopsis and/or trailer one can already tell that there was intermingling of body parts, that’s not the only thing here to distract. In some shots you are enamored by the body language of some of the actors, in other shots its just the frames, and some other shots actually have more than one thing going on in full sequence at the same time (like the text conversation versus the dinner table conversation scene). It’s almost like the writer is saying, “I dare you to be bored” or “I dare you to be distracted”.

Even though the story is not overtly original or as unpredictable as the writer might have thought it would end up being (*winks at that post credit scene*), it’s still quite engaging and much of this is due to the performances. The movie was headlined by five heavy weights with cameos from two others – RMD and Ireti Doyle. That’s right! If you were drawn in by those two then you might want to reassess that because they really only appear in one to one and a half scenes. Each of the actors in this film do a fine job of embodying their characters. Their performances are all fine enough to elevate this film from ‘just okay’ to ‘interestingly good’.

The first person that stands out is Kehinde Bankole in this film with her body languages and the length of conversations she had with the camera without ever speaking. It was in her moments on the dining table, it was in the flashback moments when she was panicked and searching for Ade, it was in her eyes, it was in her body… the girl was good. Then there was the original Yoruba Demon, Deyemi Okanlawon. He was a controlled villain here – even though you might not think of him as villain-like. When you see him in action ‘hunting his prey’, you might actually find yourself falling for him and/or excusing his actions but when he has that moment at the poolside where he explains what he really thinks of his prey, all of that begins to fall off. Deyemi does a fantastic job executing this character. And so do Eyinna, Okey, and Keira with each of their respective characters.

One other major character in this film is the picture or cinematography. It’s the locations, the shots and how they are shot. We always talk about that cliche airport scene in romantic movies, well this nollywood movie really went out of their way and created a relatively memorable airport scene (sorry but the “Flower girl” moment still takes the cake). Then there are the shots of Lagos in the beginning of the movie and the music it is paired with that creates an excitement for what is to come.

It wasn’t all great though, there were shots and frames that confused me on why they were set up that way – especially the shots of the argument by the pool. It was brilliant in some moments – for example the way you would see Mikey and Dianne arguing in the same frame that Richie is just chilling in the corner of, and then it was confusing in other moments – like how they would decide who was in a frame and who wasn’t and then pan back and forth. Or how they would blur some characters out when we, the audience, should be able to see their reactions because they are critical to the subject of said scene. It was all quite interestingly chaotic. But there was that underwater fight scene which sort of made up for it all. It was very well shot and was smartly choreographed because that fight would not have been half as impactful if it was on land.

Dinner is simple work that becomes stronger because of the details and attention paid by all involved. The last thing it is is a waste of time.