The Good Neighbor

The Good Neighbor is a “made for YouTube” movie (I assume) about a single dad (Kachi Nnochiri) and his daughter (Gabby) who relocate from Abuja to Lagos. Upon arrival, he realizes that his next door neighbor and landlord is someone from his past. The neighbor, Rachel (Bimbo Ademoye), was infact someone who played integral role in his family in the past. As time goes by, Rachel and Gabby get closer and our single dad struggles increasingly to hide his desires to be with Rachel.

The above sentence says his “desires” to be with Rachel but don’t get it confused, the way this character is written and performed it does not appear that Kachi has any romantic leanings towards the character of Rachel. In fact, it’s hard to decipher whether it is love or obligation or just taking Gabby back to someone who is “family”. Hence, it’s hard to call this film a romance of any sorts. It’s really just a few many scenes shot inside three different houses with people saying a lot of words.

I say “saying a lot of words” here instead of performing because there was a huge scarcity of actors in this film. In fact, one can argue that it was only Bimbo Ademoye acting here. Kachi struggles in every scene with everything but not as much as the character of Smart (played by Tommy Roland) seemed to struggle in front of the character. Our young Gabby (Chimamanda Unigwe) attempts to rise above but many times seems to lack direction and comes off putting in so much effort that it is clear she is ‘trying’.

The Good Neighbor lacks that sweet element that endears you to the usual low quality hastily written films that nollywood for YouTube movies have become known for. It’s hard to determine where it looses this, is it the story that doesn’t pull you in? Is it the writing that misses elements? Is it the absolute lack of good performances? It’s hard to say but for whatever reason, this isn’t one that you might remember for long.