Slay Queen

It’s interesting to watch a film in this day and age where there is a clear cut “bad/wayward” character contrasted against a clear cut “good/wifely” character. It’s especially interesting because the bad girl is bad mostly because she’s a slay queen – as though she can’t be anything else, and the good girl is good because she cares for the young child – as though that precludes her from being evil. It feels very reminiscent of the era of nollywood movies where you see Patience Ozokwor and Hilda Dokubo on the cast lineup and you already know who will be abusing who. But it’s a film, so carry go with that artistic license.

In Slay Queen, a young well-to-do widower and father – Thelma (Daniel Lloyd) – abandons his girlfriend of three years (Matilda Obaseki) and falls for a slay queen (Bimbo Ademoye) who presents herself to be what she is not. We can already establish from the synopsis that this is not the most layered storyline. It’s very old nollywood in that there is black and there is white and by the end the good gets rewarded and the bad gets punished, end of story.

There’s not much that’s intriguing in this movie if we are being quite honest. As far as performances go, Matilda and Bimbo have both done more impressive work on lighter stories. However, watching Bimbo body a malicious character is always entertaining. Even Daniel, whose performances are mostly questionable, has done more impressive work in the past. Watching him in that scene here where he was proposing while staring so intensely at Bimbo was comical to watch, it was as if he was playing a blinking game and if he blinked he would loose.

The production is alright at best. I won’t make too many comments about the scene where after shooting on set at daytime , Thelma calls the nanny to ask if his daughter has eaten lunch, then proceeds to text Regal and the time stamp says 08:20? Is it AM? Is it PM? Do you used to eat lunch at 8am in your village?

The video quality could have been better – on iBaka, the graphics for iBaka TV’s ad before and after the movie look crisper than the actual quality of the film itself. The scenes in which the characters are texting each other and the audience has to decipher what is being communicated via the text on screen was unnecessary punishment due to the colors in the background of the text messages. After a while, even I gave up on squinting to read the text after all you’ll get the general idea from the character’s reactions. All in all, Slay Queen, is simply a decent time pass.