Mannerless

Let us just agree to conversate with this review, yes? Yes!

Okay, I am not sure why I keep doing it to myself and watching these YouTube Ruth Kadiri movies with three to four cast members. But there’s honestly nothing better to go along with your day-to-day household activities than a nollywood made-for-YouTube movie playing in the background. So, enter “Mannerless”!

Mannerless is the story of an obnoxious young lady from a relatively well-to-do home, Winnie (Stefania Bassey), who swears to never date a ‘broke’ man as it is beneath her. Whenever she meets someone who appears less well-of than she is, she becomes truly ‘mannerless’ and sometimes resorts to unprovoked physical attacks on the person. For some reason Phil (Chidi Dikeh), the rich son of a wealthy tycoon, sees all this and decides “yes, this mannerless creature is the one that I want to fall in love with”... but who am I to question love, you know?

In his attempt to make sure that the girl who has already established only wants money from relationships falls for him for something other than his money, he colludes with his cousin (Jake played by Eronini Osinachim) to hatch a dishonest plan. Out of the abundance of their originality, the plan they come up with is for him to pretend to be broke and for his friend to pretend to be rich. As these things go, overtime Winnie (aka Mannerless) starts falling for the broke guy she previously swore against because she falls in love with his heart. And then they all live happily ever after. Listen, that was not a spoiler because no-one here looked at the poster and thought “hmm, I wonder how this one ends”.

One thing that I will give Ruth’s company credit for with these movies is the attempt to introduce new talents to the nollywood landscape. My hope is that in a year or two from now, these actors will graduate to doing bigger and heftier roles on bigger and heftier platforms. However, hopefully by then all three of our leads would have taken an acting class or two – or maybe an entire acting degree because a lot of help is required here.

While all the actors involved in the movie are visually stunning to look at, none of them quite possess the sort of acting skills that would grant them fluidity with the camera. Of the three, one can argue that Eronini was the better actor as some of his actions seemed less robotic than the rest. Thrusted into lead roles in films without much of a supporting cast, their lack of skill really shines in this movie. And it’s sad because the characters are given some very funny punchlines to deliver but they aren’t yet skilled enough to pull it off effortlessly.

The storyline of Mannerless utilizes a lot of convenient plot devices to move the story along to the final gratifying end. And we keep watching these movies because for some reason the happy moments give you a strong sense of “aww” despite the multiple “WTF” moments that preceded in the movie.

Watch this as a background movie when you are multi-tasking. Definitely do not use this to introduce anyone to nollywood.