The Bling Lagosians

The Bling Lagosians – a movie about the 1% of the 1%. If you somehow manage to look past the economic repercussions included in that phrase (I mean the suggestion that in a country where a majority of the people live on less than a dollar a day, possibly 0.01% of our population will see more money in a day than all those $1 people will see in their lives combined), you will enter yet another world of overtly wealthy people in Eko spending their overtly abundant money on overtly ridiculous things. Sound familiar? 

Except this time, the makers are owning the pretentiousness of this world right down to the title – The Bling Lagosians. It is sold as a story about the wealthy wife of one of these one percent-one percenters, who is insistent on having an ultra lavish 51st birthday party – because what could possibly be more ridiculous than a 51st birthday bash? Except the story is not just about that! It’s the story of her husband and his crippling business empire brought about by his many bad money habits, it’s the story of her first daughter and her crippling marriage, it’s the story of her second daughter and her struggle to win an Oscar, it’s also the story of her wealthy backbiting friends who continuously try to bring her down, and her domestic help and their attempt to get paid for their services. It is truly a cramped film! Yet somehow, despite all this cramping and all this glitz and glam, it still struggles to hold on to the attention of the audience.

“Forgettable” is quite the word to describe much of this movie. Because even though it belongs to a class of nollywood movies with ‘aspirational’ characters, it is still not the most aspirational. The combination of the cinematography plus the physical locations and sets don’t quite manage to present the glitz and the glamour in a way that’s memorable or that stands out to the audience. In comparison, I might not remember a single thing about the plot of TWP2, but I definitely remember the grandeur of the locations – not just the fancy Dubai hotels, even that stairwell scene with Daniella Down and her character’s parents is stuck to memory. The Bling Lagosians never has any of those cinematographic moments that at least awe the audience.

I want to say “now go and watch bling lagosians”…. But as today is Sunday, I’ll behave myself 🙊 https://t.co/2Mr1C8raLl

— Oge (NR) (@NollywdREinvntd) October 13, 2019

Then there are the performances. Elvina Ibru is our lead protagonist in this one, and when you think that this is the same Elvina of “Letters to A Stranger“, you realize how grossly uninspiring this performance actually is. Then again, it is difficult for an actor to create inspiring work out of a one dimensional character who is only given a shadow of depth in the final moments of the movie when the script writer needs a quick excuse to enter his/her “and they lived happily ever after” moment. The best moment in this movie was arguably the scene after Mr. Holloway is made to leave his company and walks outside into a horde of eagerly waiting press members. It was the singular moment where some sort of emotion was almost evoked.

Since we are on the matter, there is the issue of the actual plot development of this movie. The most gripping character in this storyline is arguably Mr. Holloway himself. If the character was explored any more deeply or intently, one could argue that this could have been a much more entertaining film to watch. It would be a different spin on that ‘frivolous son of a wealthy man’ angle that nollywood does so frequently, because this time it would focus instead on what happens when that frivolity is not curtailed early on. Then there was the matter of the resolution of this movie. Usually after the climactic fall in most stories, there is a brief period of grief and repentance before the characters rise again. However, in this movie, one could have held their breath for the duration of time it took these characters to bounce back from their lowest low and just go back to living their ‘blingy’ lives.

Flashy or non-flashy, the foundation of good movies are good stories. Unfortunately, the story behind the Bling Lagosians is grossly lacking. Hence, even resorting to an extended celebrity cast, multiple afrobeats inclusions, the insertion of the overdone and overbeaten comic relief by the “local Igbo business man” or the “comedic domestic help” and the multiple male and female eye candy, do nothing individually or together to salvage the film.