Champions of our Time

Champions of our time is a movie that threads on new grounds by exploring something different for a change, something substantial, and something other than the usual. It tells the story of a young girl in a wheelchair attempting to participate in an international quiz/contest. She is rejected at many stops due to her ‘handicap’.

The movie seeks to show the general attitude of individuals, whether consciously or unconsciously, towards the physically challenged. She is rejected from the contest on fables of her being unable to contest due to her physical handicap. The question really is what does ones leg have to do with one’s brain? The real issue, as it appears, is that they most seek their own personal gains whilst others are convinced that having a physically challenged girl win an international contest at the national level would be a stain on the country’s image.

The movie as a whole aims for this emotionally-uplifting-eyeopener-feel, however, it falls short of this at way too many points. The directing and quality of the entire production needs a thorough revamp. At times it’s emotionally uplifting but most times it’s just depressing that this is the quality of movie we are making for such a strong storyline. The audio falls in and out of place way too many times. The set is supposed to evoke a feeling of grandeur and class, that is if the dialogues are anything to go by, but in reality in just looks really cheap and doesn’t seem like anything more than Cowbell Quiz Competition if they still have those.

It is extremely cheesy, the movie as a whole has random moments where it just goes off on a cheesy tangent where emotional music starts to play and it all gets really dramatic. All this would be fine if it did not appear so sudden and out of the blues. For a movie with such high ideals, and such great intentions, it turns out to be quite boring. Truth is, I don’t want to sit for God-knows-how-many-minutes and watch kids answer a bunch of questions. I’m sitting through all the questions and answers thinking to myself “this is all really fascinating but I really don’t care who named Nigeria or why she named it that or who she married or where she’s from, I don’t care about the coups, I don’t care about Lord Lugard. I’m trying to watch a movie not a history lesson”.

I had originally assumed that the movie would follow a certain formula: hardwork, rejection, approval, breakthrough, success. Now, there was a little bit of a change from the formula in the second part but not so much that the movie is drastically different from what you’d expect. The movie throws very few surprises at the audience, it’s not as emotionally uplifting as it seeks to be, the score for the entire film could have been so much better (but they do make up for this in the speech scenes that make up the cheesy tangents). The movie has a message that gets across eventually but the probability of the audience getting bored before this message arrives is quite prominent.

I cannot but praise Treasure Obasi who plays the role of Sophia, the child on the wheelchair. I am always fixating on the issue of child talent in Nollywood, now granted Treasure Obasi is no Imogen Hogg (from ‘Trinity‘) but she does much better than most of the Nollywood child actors I’ve seen since Sharon Ezeamaka. She attempts to emote and you can see that on her face even though she doesn’t always achieve that which she aims for. She does much better than most… well all the other children in this movie.

Seeing Joke Silva as a villain was definitely a change and a shock, that I’m still recovering from. It is my sincere opinion that it’s about time that Segun Arinze returned to the screens. All together the movie had a strong cast with a couple weak links.

However, in watching the movie I took away one message which is that the Nigerian education system doesn’t really seek to teach anyone anything other than how to cram in a bunch of random information that you probably won’t ever use again in your life. And I arrived at this conclusion because these kids were being given booklets for a few minutes and were brought back, asked a few questions, and then cued to recite everything they had crammed in during the break. This is where I agree with Okechukwu Ofili of “How Stupidity Saved My Life” because are you really learning if all that is required of you is to recite?