City Girls

City girls is a movie about three young, ambitious male doctors who…Okay I’m just pulling your leg. But really, knowing the title of the film and glancing at the film’s poster on YouTube – with Onyii Alex, Uche Montana and Lina Idoko in their wavy weaves and snazzy dresses, is all you really need to have a central idea of what it’s all about. But I’ll humor you all the same; It’s about Blessing (Montana); a beautiful but unemployed lady who by fate’s design meets Yvonne (Alex), also beautiful but living the soft life, due to the generosity of her sponsors; rich, elderly, married men.

They become friends and Yvonne, against the advice of her friend Nancy (Idoko), generously takes Blessing under her wing, showing her the good life and how to attain it. Not long after, Blessing (rechristened ‘Alicia’ by Yvonne), grows her own wings and betrays her benefactor. The two then become enemies, each sworn to defeat the other but fate deals them another hand which completely alters both their lives.

Onyii Alex, who I critiqued in a recent article, is here again. In that review, I expressed my displeasure at her acting and suggested that she might have had problems navigating the role of humble servant (literally) because it was out of her forte. Seeing her here, I have now confirmed that it wasn’t an issue of roles but a foundational problem with her approach to acting. Onyii Alex’s acting is, to put it mildly, cringeworthy. Her cadence has no semblance whatsoever to the normal pattern of human speech. I can’t tell if it’s supposed to be an imitation of a foreign accent but if it is, then it must be that of a country born solely of her own imagination.

Perhaps it’s simply an attempt at an upper class voice but whatever it is, it is bad and why directors allow her to carry on with it when everyone else speaks naturally, beats me. Even her movements are as exaggerated as her voice. You may then decide that perhaps she just isn’t a very good actor until you see her in later scenes where she conveys anger and despair, freeing herself from these self-imposed restrictions and speaking Igbo and colloquial English, allowing her talent to shine through.

Uche Montana was a pleasant surprise personally, perhaps I just hadn’t seen her in enough roles before to know just how good she is. She delivers in all her scenes, from the amusing clashes with her mum, to other humorous scenes like when Chief decides to get her a house and she tells Chief’s contact, over the phone to ‘Give everybody quit notice, tell them I have money,’ in a comical braggartly tone, to the scenes after her falling out with Alex where she engages her former senpai and Nancy in a war of words. The finesse with which she delivers her lines coupled with her facial expressions during these confrontations is simply brilliant. Lina Idoko too is clearly good, the second best of the three.

The film’s cast is generally decent. Ifeoma Odukwe who plays Blessings mum is a delight to watch. She shows complete dedication to her character as Blessing’s voice of moral censure. Sadly though, her admonition falls on deaf ears, but it is good for the audience because it means we get to see more and more of her. Her dialogue with Montana is interesting to watch as the two bounce perfectly and humorously off each other. In one scene, Blessing returns from some shopping with Yvonne, and her mother scolds her because she believes she has purchased the expensive items on credit. She tells Blessing that she can buy beautiful ‘Okrika’ (secondhand clothes) for her instead and as Uche attempts to cut her off, she quicky adds, ‘First grade o!’ for emphasis.

Shortly after, when Blessing says the clothes are a gift she tells her; ‘the only truth in your mouth is Good morning and that is when you say it at the right time.’ She owns her role as the quintessential African mum; intolerant of unproductivity, untiring in moral stricture and candid, sometimes to a point of comicality.

Asides the acting, nearly everything else is uninspiring. I tire of having to repeat the same standard, though completely deserved criticisms of these movies, chief of which is the fact that they are all revisions of remakes of rehashed storylines, without any attempt to at least give them any significant repackaging (alliteration intended). The editing work is also poorly done. In one scene Yvonne is talking to Blessing and the scene just cuts to another right in the middle of her sentence. In another, Yvonne is talking with Blessing and Nancy when it cuts again in the middle of a sentence, only for her to start the sentence again in another cut that is shoddily joined to the first.

Poor sound and camera quality are two additional failings the film has outside of the usual. The cinematography or video grading gives the video a dark grim tone that is unusual and unnecessary. As for the sound, it at some points, just cuts off when the characters are not speaking so whatever background sound is playing just leaves unceremoniously before returning. The list goes on and on.

In summary, ‘City Girl’ might be a sufficient way to pass time but as both viewers and makers know, it is far from being, in Ifeoma Odukwe’s humorously high voice – ‘Grade one!’

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