By Ali Baylay

Executive Image Movies &Franco Films: Starring: Emeka Ike, Juliet Ibrahim, Emeka Akolo, Charity Eke, Nora Ugo; Production Manager: Chininso Okoli; Producer/Exec. Producer: Kenneth Okonkwo; Editor: Ilo Collins E.; Director:Emeka Muangwu; Principal Locations: Ghana/Nigeria. 112 mins; c2009. 

What if God grants you the most wonderful, beautiful, obedient, god-fearing , respectful and hardworking wife and because of  a preconceived notion about certain types of women, especially those who work in the banks, as planted in your  mind by a friend who has a philandering wife, you become suspicious of your own. Being pumped up you become impatient and jealous, and drives her out of the relationship. In exchange, you end up with the most crude, gross and unorthodox girl, who wouldn’t tolerate caress or foreplay in bed because, it is the work of the devil.

Restore My Love is a linear story of  Achike (Emeka Ike), who falls in love with a clean-cut and hard working Jeneth (Juliet Ibrahim), but because of a preconceived notion of women who work in banking institutions, he becomes despondent and sends her packing, but ends up with a woman who is a mismatch for him. Actually, his friend Ossy(Emeka Akolo) causes him look at his wife, Jeneth with the wrong eyes. When he finally sees the light, he promises to go back to his wife. Meanwhile, Jeneth had been fired from the bank because she couldn’t give in to an aids-ridden bank manager. At one point, she goes back to the village to her mother but couldn’t stay and have to come back to the city and gets job with a cable company. She’s pregnant with Acheke’s child the whole while.

Jeneth’s hard to forgive Achike but being so in love with her husband, she manages to accept him back in her life and let him hold their daughter  in his arms, in their living room.

“An incredible story”, as Janeth herself at length could put it. Yes, an incredible story I can attest to. Here in Restore My Love, Achike has the natural motivation through miseries by associating himself with someone that he’s not at par with, socially. I admire him too in two scenes concerning his self realization and preparations to restore his love. One is in the scene where Achike stands over Ogby: “The party is over…I can’t control you anymore…I want you to leave my life”, even as the uncouth Ogby, could retort to his statement: “Me, a be your wife-o”.  And in another scene, he tells his friend Ossy: “I’ll swallow my pride and look for Janeth”. And so he does.

When such linear type stories are told, with not much digressions to unnecessarily hold viewers attention as we witness in other stories, we feel rewarded. I love this incredible story because it has story. The two principal players, Emeka Ike and Juliet Ibrahim fight for their interests against all odds and restore their once precious love. Now a story is told.

I cannot assign a category to this film or relate it to any recent Nollywood or Gollywood flick. It is simply enchanting . I felt pulled into the center of actions from curtain up, and I cried with Jeneth, pity Bob for the blind side he maintains into the character of a wife who dearly loves him and  at curtain down, I laughed and rejoiced with both of them and their little one like a big African family. If you’ve been turned off lately by some Nollywood movies, this I promise will keep you good company. Enjoy it!

By Ali Baylay

EXECUTIVE IMAGE MOVIES & FRANCO FILMS presents Emeka Ike, Uche Jombo, Uche Elendu, Queen Nwokoye, Emeka Enyiocha, Adoara Okoh; Story: Collins Chidebe; Production Manager: Solomon Apeti; Associate Producer: Uche Elendu; Director: Mac-Collins Chidebe;  129 mins. 2008

Screenwriter, Nkem Alu’s use of a clever motif (oversize picture of a naked man placed at a focal point in the primary location of the movie) quite justifies its theme: nestfull of not-too-young-spinsters, whose biological clocks are out of whack,  laying in their nest awaiting vulnerable bachelors and cheating husbands. Koko Babes is a farce with poor production by a large measure. In some cases it touches on serious themes like serial killings and four-one-nines with no serious outcomes to affect the advancement of the story.

Digressions and subplots aside, Koko Babes is a story of four spinsters (Princess/Uche Elendu; Esther/Uche Jombo; Halima/Queen Nwokoye; Titi/Udora Ukoh) each out to get one guy they admire , a local star (DJ/Emeka Ike) and to get him in bed.

At the beginning of the film, Princess runs upon promoters putting up fliers about a local celebrity’s upcoming musical appearance at a local night club. She grabs some of the fliers, gets back into her car and runs home to her nest, their nest (spinsters) and lies that her boyfriend DJ, will be performing at a local club in town. Though the gang did not buy into the lie outright, they half convince and with envy, that there must be element of truth in Princess’s claim. Now, with the exception of Halima, Esther and Titi too want DJ for themselves. From thereon, is Esther and Titi versus Princess, and altercations after altercations, stand offs after stand offs, and near-fight after near-fight ensue.

Writer Nkem Alu builds a little dramatic tension here to the climax, when all the girls and even Halima look to the day of DJ appearance at the club. Not much ado in this scene but it surprises viewers when DJ falls for innocent Halima, and the story ends.

Half of Koko Babes’part one doesn’t in any way contributes to the story except the expositions about killing cheating husbands in hotel rooms and making away with lot of loots. Part two has meaning, tension and direction.

If I could guess one essence of this movie, is that stardom in both Nollywood and Gollywood has taken off in the same way the western world views their celebrities: Do whatever it takes to get closer to the stars, and don’t mind losing your soul in the process. If the writer’s intended objective was to write humor, the incidental killings in part one would not have been done on a serious note. But these incidents really injured our viewing pleasure of this half-baked humor.

By Ali Baylay

Cast:Emeka Ike, Van Vicker, Prince Ike, Tonto Dikeh; Produced by Pressing Forward Productions; Black Star Entertainment; Screenplay: Greg Chyke Inawodoh. 145 Minutes.

There’re really guys like this: wise guys, fast talking, tough-talking, smooth-talking and confident- building guys who can present before you a heaven on earth. They’re not your 9 to 5 kind of guys. They live by scamming, pilfering, lying, deceiving and robbing, peddling guns and drugs. They’re the best dressed, they hang out with big shots-governors, ministers, bank managers, board of directors; and they shop for, and use beautiful women and later wad them off  like flies, and beside the cordon of securities, there’s always one henchman hanging around them with a briefcase full of money. These days in modern African countries, stringent financial difficulties creates certain nostalgia for their brand of lifestyle-easy living.

Andy (Emeka Ike) is a medical doctor who cannot find job or client so he can feed himself, as he sits lamenting and soliloquizing in his little scantily dressed apartment. Then saunters in Emeka (Prince Eke), dejectedly looking after another interview flop. While both are blaming their misfortunes on the government and their gods, then comes in Jerry (Van Vicker) who is offered N15000 for a job not quite made clear in the film. These three characters assumingly bunk together in this apartment. At certain point they look like the three stoogies.

Their luck soon change when per chance Andy saves a client’s life from heart attack and this client, Chief Braimor happens to be a big time drug dealer. Being poor, and down on their lucks the three idlers soon become Chief Braimor’s drug delivery people. The three are still living together, except their condition has changed a notch up, and we see them showering party girls with lots of nairas and dollar bills at a private party, in their new marble floor apartment.

Here’s where Marshals as a story has pitfalls: First,the story doesn’t justify the title. We see Jerry and Emeka ones in the traffic, each with a briefcase, one getting in a car, and the other on a bike. What makes them become marshals doesn’t have to be just a single shot of delivery. What happens to the principle of three in story telling? I did not see any action out of the ordinary (eg. mob) that could make them  marshals for what they do except seeing them getting  in traffic.  

There’s too much telling and no showing: We never ever see what the said marshals are trading in (cocaine, pills, marijuana, counterfeit etc), nor the type of people they do business with. There’s no establishment of link between Andy, Emeka and Jerry. All these do not have history to connect them together except the fact that they live in one bedroom apartment.  Lastly, the plot line involving Cathy (Tonto Dikeh) takes so much steam out of this lackluster story.  I wonder why this plot is necessary because it doesn’t  move the story at all. Excuse me if Andy’s  gonna fall in love with her, or she’ll hire Emeka to kill Chief Braimor, in part 3, but that remain to be seen.

Until I see part 3 and see these interactions in the resolution, Marshals does not measure to its name. Indeed not all. I can guess here the writer’s aim for this story is to take a pardoxical shot at the ills of our society, and which is somehow achieved. But as a story form, and structure, the goal is not achieved.