In Bed With The Pedros

In Bed With The Pedros begins with a grammatical error, and by a TV host no less. She says “welcome for coming to the morning show with Alero”, seated opposite a guest who looks visibly distressed. A marginal mistake, maybe, but one that should have been identified and corrected, especially as those are the first words here and may get the audience off on the wrong foot going into the movie. Watching the rest of the film, however, reveals that there was perhaps no need to correct that particular error when there are several others; too much has gone wrong that bury what was a promising premise. 

The story is fairly simple. The man in the opening scene, Jide Pedro (Demola Adedoyin) is running for senator. He comes from a good stock of political heavyweights, especially his father, Otunba Pedro, a former senate president, so his victory at the polls should be fairly easy. With not long to go to the election, he hits a major snag. One night, coming back from a celebration with his wife, he runs over a woman with his car, and after persuading his wife, they leave her for dead. This is the most vital event of the film, one that shapes the entire story. After fleeing the scene, Hauwa spends the following days overcome with guilt and she desires for her and her husband to turn themselves in, but he and his father will have none of this scandal so close to the election. 

The film’s story then shows as Hauwa works to get this story out there while Jide and his father try to silence her and ensure their election goes smoothly. In Bed With The Pedros wants to portray a typical Nigerian political family—in desperate need of power, and willing to crush whatever stands in their way. But it could do better with framing this. We can feel the evil in the family, especially in how Otunba Pedro dismisses the woman’s death with nary an iota of remorse or sympathy, but even that is not sufficient to properly highlight the Pedros’ evil. Perhaps having the family be neck-deep in an ongoing crime to win the election, say a kidnapping or killing ring, would have properly explained Hauwa’s animosity to them, or at least better than a hit and run where the crime has already been committed in the past, and accidentally as well. 

It is a common theme for characters in In Bed With The Pedros to act in dissonance to normal behaviour, like when Hauwa’s mother barely puts up a resistance when Hauwa is being framed by the Pedros as insane, or in some of the measures Otunba takes to try and stop the story from spreading. Sometimes the film can feel like a sequel, other times like a movie that has had every alternating scene cut. Because of this some plotlines are difficult to follow, like the story with Hauwa’s pregnancy, and do not be surprised to find yourself rewinding to see if you missed anything. Some of these important pieces of the story will need to be pieced together as they are mentioned in passing in other scenes. Directing, by Niyi Towolawi, doesn’t help matters here, and it happens often that scenes do not get sweeping camera work to let you know where they are set. Like when a character is in the hospital, a simple camera pan to a ‘Hospital’ sign would help. Hauwa comes home one day and unexpectedly meets Otunba Pedro in her living room; we are not given any prior indication whose house it is. As always, it is left to the dialogue to tell you where the film is set. 

Akin Lewis, with his experience, is the star performer here. He channels Otunba Pedro’s sinister win-at-all-cost personality, as well as the friendly, almost jocular act he plays when he interacts with Hauwa, an act that still warns you that every piece of fatherly advice he offers is in fact a threat. Yemi Solade, playing Alfred Madu, the father of the slain woman, should be expected to bring a similar experienced performance, but he ends up falling flat with his acting, and sometimes you wonder if a line of his delivery did not need a second take. For Its primary cast, Ademola Adedoyin and Rahaman Sadau fare about average as Jide Pedro and Hauwa, but their performances needed to be much better if they were to convey the tremendous weight of the guilt they are under and how it drives them to make the decisions that shape the entire film. 

In Bed With The Pedros is not one of those low-budget films that shine above financial constraints by maximising the things beyond the reach of money, like cast and crew performances. Here, it seems no one is making any great effort to see this film succeed. Each member of the crew and cast put in the minimum they can and then keep things going, so scenes that should be reshot are left in, poor microphone work causes you to lose audio when a character changes position, major scenes are poorly and hilariously shot. 

In Bed With The Pedros brought enormous potential, but it is high time Nollywood producers realised that the job of executing this premise from scene to scene is more important than just thinking it up. Perhaps another group of writers, another director and cast, furnished with a higher budget, could have produced a thrilling drama about this ambitious family and the brave woman that fights them, but this set gets hardly anything right asides this premise.