Before Getting Married
Frederick Leonard, Nkiru Umeh, Tina Mba, Eric Taylor, Donald Okoye, Stephanie Dickson, Stella Udeze,
A 40yr old man is receiving great pressure from his mother in regards to his incapability to date or bear children. His pastor however helps him to meet a God fearing woman, who accepts his practice of celibacy, until they finally become husband and wife.
"I didn't marry you to do o. I married you because I wanted a companion. I didn't marry you to do"
Ikechukwu Onyeka
Emeka Micheal Oguike
Kingstessi
2016
The 'weirdly different' storyline
The directing
Ok so this movie wasn’t what I expected. Neither was it what I ever expected to be watching in my life… but it definitely was entertaining from start to finish.
Before Getting Married is the story of a 40 year old unmarried man whose mother (and well, I guess the entire society because apparently staying single is against the law) continues to pester him to find a wife. In fact, at some point his mother gives the speech that many people dating out of their culture would just really love to hear. She says and I paraphrase, “I don’t care where she’s from. I don’t care if she’s from Cotonou or Bangladesh. Just bring me somebody. As long as she is a she”.
When the pestering becomes endless, his priest (oh yeah, Priests do it too) introduces him to a young lady. Fortunately enough (because apparently match.com has got nothing on Priests), the lady he meets is just his type and he courts and eventually marries her. Throughout the courtship, they abstain from sex because he tells her that he has a made a promise to God. The only comma here is that even after they are married it seems that promise has an extended warranty that will never end.
So our new wife is faced with the ever so strange problem of determining why her husband won’t (how do you say) get “familiar” with her.
It was very different in the sense that even the viewers cannot understand why a man who looks like Frederick Leonard was behaving the way he was. In fact, for a moment there I was certain that his character was a cultist. It keeps you wondering long enough but not too long that you lose interest in the reason.
The climax of the movie comes after the wife has tried everything to get her husband to reveal to her why he won’t have intercourse with her and she flips a glass dining table. Hol’ up! She REALLY flipped the table cos I know our graphic design level never reach that stage in nollywood for this to have been faked. That was about the only impressive moment in the production.
The director of this movie is listed as Ikechukwu Onyeka but I have a hard time reconciling the name with the poor directing.Is it the same Ikechukwu Onyeka that directed this? Why is the camera moving like a learner though? All these unflaterring angles? Back and forth motions of the camera? Gaining and losing focus all over the place? Who is directing this?
Props to the lead characters (Fredrick Leonard & Nkiru Umeh) for holding interest from start to finish because without the strange storyline and their sufficient performances, the production quality of this movie would have chased the viewers away within the first half.
In the end, I was mostly grateful that a solution was rendered because if not the movie would have been promoting ignorance in an already dangerously ignorant society. It would have been very irksome and I, personally, would have penned down a very negative review if a solution was not at least offered. In that light, the movie was at least educative.
