By Ali Baylay

Executive Image Movies and Franco Films Presents: Emeka Ike, Nadia Buari, Chika Ike, Fredo Arico, Emeka Ani; Production Manager: Ben Ayosinti; Producer: Kenneth Okonkwo; Editor: Nnoshiri Charles Brain; Exec. Producer: Kenneth Okonkwo; Director: Ugo Ugbor; Principal Locations: Ghana/Nigeria; 133 mins. c2009.

The Followers is a topic that invokes religious connotations as in ‘disciples’, but don’t be fooled brother, this is a film glorifying animism and devil worship with Christian church simply as a front. To a large extent however, the use of such plot device to carry the story to the finish line didn’t prove worthy at all. To be honest, I keep asking myself the essence of devil worship in the tract. Let me belabor the story here for you, but don’t feel disappointed if all the plot asides not useful to the story are not told. We simply pick the grains from the chaffs.

Sandra (Nadia Buari), an uppity clean cut young girl is forced by her mother to join her in the Wednesday prayer-worship at the church. At the church, while prayers go on inside, Sandra nonchalant, sits outside and toys with her cell phone. Inside, one of the worshippers fall swoon on the floor obviously taken over by the demon but manages to enter the spirit of Sandra and provide her gateway to the underworld. In the underworld, Sandra is betrothed to a demon who won’t allow her marry to humans. He kills a suitor who meets Sandra’s mother asking for Sandra’s hand in marriage. 

Having buried one suitor, burial or concern for the death of suitor not shown in the movie, Sandra meets Bob (Emeka Ike) the same guy who sacrificed his mother to the devil for the sake of getting rich in the Warriors of Satan. Without a glitch, Bob marries Sandra and except for occasional sneezes when Sandra’s underworld husband, the Demon visits him in his office, the marriage continues unabated.

Sandra did not have any child with Bob but she did have two girls with the Demon, as we see her feeding them in real life but lets them vanish into nothingness before Bob could enter the living room. In the last scenes of the Followers, the Demon airlifts Bob from in the arms of Sandra as they lay asleep in the bedroom, and deposits him by the way side at the thoroughfare in the heart of the city, while he takes Bob’s place by Sandra. The film ends.  

To be honest, I feel disappointed when the curtain went down on this movie. Unless part 3 might be in the making, I could call this a cliff-hanger resolution. What powers Bob might have possessed that makes him not killed by the Demon like did the first suitor, and there’s  not a single confrontation between Bob and the spirit world. This here makes the story flat. No intensity. Nada.

Pastor Jude’s flirtatious and sexual gestures toward his female followers in the church are used understandably as an exposition. But even in the face of such device, the scenes and incidents are so long that they take on a life of their own. This movie would have hit the mark if there was to have been a confrontation between the gods of the underworld as is in the Trojan War over Helen. Pastor Jude would have inherited Bob to redeem his wife Sandra from the grips of the Demon. In speaking structurally,  we would have enjoyed the essence of the followers if there had been open war of the gods over their human interests, and not their non-sense in the picture.

By Ali Baylay

A VENUS PRODUCTION, STARRING:Yvonne Nelson, John Dumelo, Kofi Adjorlolo, Amonebea Dodoo, Gavivina Tamaklo, Brenda Osei Bonsu; Production Manager: Loius Saah Acquahman; Story: Abdul Salam Mumuni: Screenplay: Phil Efe Bernard; Continuity: Maxwell Awuni; Editor: Dapo-Ola Daniels; DOP: Adams Umar; Associate Producer: Roger Quartey; Producer/Executive Producer: Abdul Salam Mumini; Director: Frank Raja Arasi; 144 mins. C2009.

I believe Material Girl is more like a treatise in philosophy 101, than a simple drama. The movie is replete with the word ‘moral, morality’ to a point that the drama takes a second place in the presentation. I do not think Material Girl is a movie about good versus evil as the theme suggests. It is a movie based on evil versus evil. All major characters are existentialists by creed. To vindicate this claim, Cassie in one of her tirades declares: “life doesn’t give to those who ask, it gives to those who demand”.

The story goes like this: Cassie (Yvonne Nelson) gets paid after sleeping with an older gentleman in a hotel room and runs from the scene with a briefcase she thinks is full of money, asks a lift from a car passing by and later steals the driver’s cell phone. She’s disappointed by the discovery that the briefcase holds nothing but documents. She later visits her bedridden sick mother who would not take her daughter’s ill-begotten money for her treatment.

Hon. Jayke falls in love with Cassie after finding out she rescues his wife Jessica (Amanobea Dodoo) from collapsing outside their mansion. They both enjoy their secret rendezvous. Hon. Jayke buys Cassie a house and even  helps procure a government contract for her. Meanwhile, Cassie’s mother is on her deathbed in a hospital where the doctor refuses her treatment because she does not have money. Cassie’s younger sister prostitutes herself to her uncle just so she can raise money for her mother’s medical cost, but ends up with a bounced check. She still tries to steal money and got beat up and ends up in comma in the same hospital their mother is admitted. After pulling out of the comma, she goes and kills the uncle.

On the other side of the spectrum, Cassie is having a ball, shopping and basking in the good life as the Honorable Minister asks his wife Jessica to dissolve their 29 years of marriage. He wants to marry Cassie and live happily ever after. Unfortunately, his only son, Greg, character played by up and coming Gollywood star, John Dumelo gets in town from America and Cassie dates him. Jessica, hires a private eye to investigate reason for her husband’s estrangement, while Hon. Jayke too hires a hit man to kill any one that has come between him and Cassie for her strange disappearances. With not enough time left for both parents, Jessica finds out her son and husband are having affair with the same girl-Cassie. “I brought a serpent into my home”, she laments. For Hon. Jayke, he’s now living on a borrowed times beacause the hit men hired by him are presently stabbing  his only son to death, caught in the arms of Cassie. 

The last Koffie Adjorolo’s movie I reviewed was Sleepwalker in which a woman, (Genevieve Nnaji) three times less than his age ritualistically murders him in bed,while chasing after his lost (lust?) youth. In Material Girl too,he’s in search of the same lost youth, a friend asks him why going after a younger girlfriend, he says “not doing it out of nostalgia, I’m simply making a discovery”. Here’s such a cruel discovery in the hands of his one time movie daughter in Princess Tyra. “The wishes of mortals the gods command” as she would assert in Princess Tyra. Here, Cassie carries with her the same air of insolence to the point of fooling all the people all the time to her selfish gains but only this time stopping short in the face of a morass she helps orchestrate.

By Ali Baylay

Starring: Ramsey Nouah, Magid Michel, Nse Ikpe-Etim, Mercy Johnson, Desmond Elliot,Omoni Oboli; Screenplay: Uyai Ikpe-Etim/Bula Aduwo; DOP: Austine Nwaolie/Issac Martins; Executive Producers: Emem Isong, Desmond Elliot; Editor: Uche-Alex Moore; Producers: Emem Isong, Desmond Elliot; Director: Daniel Ademinokan; Assistant Director: Desmond Elliot. c.2009

Guilty Pleasures is one of the few Nollywood productions that’ll surely go into cinematic history as a classic. To a large extent it has the makeup and flare of Citizen Kane. Terso in Guilty Pleasures shares the insolence and self righteousness of Orson Welles in Citizen Kane in his Zanadu mansion.  Just the way Welles idolizes Susan Alexander, so Terso idolizes Liz in Guilty Pleasure and they do so to a fault that cause their happiness to go asunder.

Guilty Pleasures is a narrative of two divorced wives telling how they were each robbed out of their marriages. Each story has a semblance of classic Hollywood: Citizen Kane on one hand and Fatal Attraction on the other. The stories are told interchangeably by the two and the screenwriters Uyai Ikpe-Etim and Bula Aduwo do so cleverly without confusing viewers. In one account the wife throws the husband out, and in the other, the rich husband cannot help but throw the pig back into the sty.

Kinetchi (Rob Loner) is a photographer who on a gig, runs into Boma (Mercy Johnson) and have a one night stand with her and vanishes out of his life at least, for a moment. Later, their path crosses and it is portraits after portrait at the beach and a night at her pad. When Kinetchi too vanishes obviously on a honeymoon with a newly wed, Boma is stressed out and goes into a massage parlor. While there, the newly wed wife Nse (Omoni Oboli) visits and she’s introduced to Boma and found out that Boma is an interior decorator.  She invites Boma to their house for a dinner and sleepover. Boma,  having come to know this lady stole her heart jumps on the invitation. While Kinetchi’s wife sleeps, he tiptoes into Boma’s room more to satisfy an insatiable desire for her than for her to get out of his life. They’re caught having it out in the living room and he lost the marriage.

The other guilty pleasures take place in the household of Terso. He is a wealthy man of good taste who showers his wife with anything beautiful, but his attention. Terso’s attention could not be dissuaded from his business meetings and trips in exchange for the attention to his wife, so when Terso’s wife takes his photographer younger brother Bobby (Magid Michel) from the airport, at first there’s love-hate introductory relationship between them.  Bobby is young and hot, and every young girl’s dream, especially any girl posing for his camera will fall under his spell and warmth, as did his brother’s wife Liz, an old model. She in turn has been missing the glare and glamour of showbiz coupled with Bobby’s presence in the house, fills the vacuum created by Terso’s absence from her bedroom. She falls prey to Bobby’s almost psychotic gesture towards her, and allows him to deflower the long buried flame of desire in her. That is how Eve (Liz) left Eden.

One cannot review this movie without looking at the line up of the cast. No one other than Ramsey Nuoah would have played the character of Terso more exactly than himself. He has the persona and the perfect grit  for the role. Ramsey has played mostly affluent Nollywood roles to the point that he can be typecast. Most of all, forget the skin tone, the camera loves him. He doesn’t pose he acts and he delivers in Guilty pleasures. Other surprising acts that capture ones attention are those of Magid Michel and Mercy Johnson. Both roles are either psychotic or bordering on  neurotic. You can hear it in their deliveries, in their actions, their laughters and in their behaviors. I think the authors of this remarkable work are portraying artists as loonies.

If there’s a focal attention in Guilty Pleasures, that attention belongs to Ramsey Nouah. Like I said earlier, his acting in this flick is a carbon copy of Orson Welles at both the height of his glory and his downfall-losing his wife. And he acts with such integrity and persona that George Clooney would envy. In the whole movie he’s neither too aloof in the beginning nor softhearted in the end.

I can bet my bottom dollar on Guilty Pleasures to make your evening grande. The energy that went on to produce this movie is visible on the screen. Thanks to Desmond Elliot and partner for having such a sumptious production. An engrossing story! Guilty Pleasures is a romantic, nostalgic, and a sentimental presentation, period.