Couple of Days

Alright, so let’s get this out of the way immediately. HANDS UP if you saw this movie/the trailer and immediately thought it was a Nollywood remake of Tyler Perry’s “Why Did I Get Married?” (or should I say another one of nollywood’s many remakes of said movie because dem don plenty). 

The movie really does strike you as a WDIGM rehashed especially with the friends/couples who decide to go out of town on some sort of ‘couples retreat’, and while there they are forced to face the challenges of their relationships. The first couple is played by Kiki and Ademola. Even though they attempt to create a front for others the husband is actually going through financial struggles in his start-up, and his wife low-key has an addiction to shopping (but just ‘low key’ though, no one is judging her here). 

Our next couple is played by Enyinna and Lilian. Enyinna is the workaholic husband to the overly devoted Lilian. No matter how hard they try to appear happy, it lacks conviction. And then there’s our overly perfect couple – Adesua and Okey – who seem like they couldn’t possibly have any problems… right? Except it’s a movie and we all know how these go… the happiest ones are almost always hiding the deepest secrets.

After having seen WDIGM, we can almost anticipate how this story is going to go. It’s no secret that secrets will come to light, the question is whether or not the writer will manage to keep us interested the entire way for the revelation and whether or not the revelations will be worth the wait. The next question is whether our actors will be able to pull off the flawed/human characters that they are representing. And on both counts this movie does well enough.

The movie aspires to greatness but seems to fall just a little bit short of it. It is evident that the cinematographer is aiming to create something beautiful in many scenes, however, he/she doesn’t always attain that. Regardless, one thing this movie does excellently is in creating exposure – especially for IB city (Ibadan). It manages to portray the city in a way that could rival any other tourism campaign. At the end of the movie, even I wanted to schedule a trip to IB.

As earlier mentioned, the movie wins partly because of the actors. It is able to go the extra mile from ‘wait, this is just a copy of why did I get married too” to actually becoming a movie worth watching in its own right mainly because of the cast. Even though all cast members did a great job of portraying their role, special mention goes to Adesua and Lilian for completely annihilating all emotions in their respective confession scenes.

In the end, Couple of Days is a nice little movie that arguably teaches lessons. However, it doesn’t really lend itself towards being remembered much after it has been watched.