Stanley Ekwelike (Simon), Adesuwa Etomi (Cindy), Okry Uzoeshi (Daniel), Melvin Oduala (Bode), Henry Uchegbu (Kevin), Zubby Michael (Deji), Kelvin Mike (Sammy), Eucharia Anunobi (Cindy’s Mom). Story, Stanley Ekewelike; Screenplay, Reginald Ebere; Editor, Ibrahim Salami; Producer/Executive Producer, Chidi Dominic; Director, Ikechukwu Onyeka. (2017)
It lies not in our power to love or to hate for will in us is overruled by fate-Christopher Marlowe.
Wedding Party Reloaded opens with teardrops on the cheeks of Cindy (Adesuwa Etomi), her head on her mother’s (Eucharia Anunobi) shoulder. Presently, she’s going through the bitter-sweet stings of youthful romance. She has a problem with Simon (Stanley Ekwelike). ” By the way, I’ve heard rumors, bad rumors about you,” Cindy’s mother admonished her daughter. She’s referring to the news that Cindy is a lesbian.The next scene is in a local entertainment department of a newspaper reporter Deji (Zubby Michael), publishing a gist on Simon as a fag. Simon’s manager Daniel (Okry Uzoeshi), is pissed that such publicity will damage the image of his client Simon.
Cindy and Simon, two names in the entertainment with a rhyme. Both are big hits, but both are in the gossip columns in a significant entertainment news as gays, and sooner or later, their managers will be losing businesses from their sponsors. Cindy is this little cutie with a long nose like my mother. My mother once told me that it’s a sign of virtue in any woman with a long nose. Cindy is awash with all the attributes of a barbie: small face, long straight nose, lanky frame, and a transparent body. Her height is just too comfortable for any suitor. No, I’m not referring to the kind of the height of Stephanie Okereke in Bank Business. Heights like those are intimidating to men. Cindy is a sweet little thing one can quickly wrap around like a Barbie doll on a chilly harmattan night. She has one defect though. Not a single man, I mean a lover, ever comes knocking at her door. And at the height of her career, she’s seemingly still a virgin and doesn’t seem to care.
There is Simon; his physic made for the Goddess Venus: Barely six feet tall, long phalanges, shiny white teeth that poke out of his Mandingo lip. You can see a broad shoulder joined by a flat handsome stomach, resting on a tight waist. He’s all muscles. He walks with the energy of a wrestler and bounces in his walk. He roamed with his heels hardly touching the ground. Men his age throw glances his way when he passes by them. They loathe and envy his energy and prosperity. Girls, girls, they swoon in his presence; they give a quick makeup to their faces so that Simon would look their way. Nada. Not only is Simon a celeb and has lots of money but the composition of his physic leaves every girl wanting him in her bed. Nada. Simon doesn’t want girls. He has lots of disdain for them. “they are a threat to my career,” he tersely concludes.
Such is the disposition of Cindy and Simon: Simon a pretty boy and Cindy, a Barbie doll. They have money, popularity and a cult following, but their managers aren’t comfortable with their reputation around town. Sooner or later, their demand will begin to lose steam and wane, if they don’t get involved in a little romantic scandal with each other, or something. Already the gossip is that Simon is a homo, and Cindy is a lesbian. Not lots of their supporters love their stars to be gay. The managers are going to lose money if they don’t change to meet the demand of their fans. African fans are not comfortable with gay stars.
Daniel and Bode (Melvin Oduala) Cindy’s manager, meet to find out how best their two-star clients will rejuvenate their characters and dispell the notoriety in the papers. They come up with a ploy to match Cindy and Simon together in a sort of photo-op gamut to dispell the ugly news in the papers about them. Simon and Cindy must be seen in public places, going in and out of hotels, shopping malls, nightclubs and all. Both the managers know the presumptions, and how difficult the characters of their clients are, and had the secret fear that their ploy will fail, and what if the hawk-eye Deji, the reporter, notices or find out that it’s a scam the two managers have planned to discredit his reporting. He’ll have a field-day with that. Yet, they are left with no option. Major sponsors are threatening to pull off, and this could cause their damnation as managers and entrepreneurs. They both go home to their clients and get a first-hand feel for the scheme.
Bode has got the first-hand weakness of his client Cindy. She doesn’t feel fulfilled. She laments that with all the money and fame, something is missing in her life. But when her agent proposes dating or having a partner, she yells out at him: ” You are the man in my life. All men are animals.” And when Bode proposes the scheme to her about hooking up with Simon to boost their moral to the outside world, she’s even more outraged: ” I always knew that guy is a fag!” Bode retorts: “Black teapot calling kettle black.” On the other side of town, Daniel and Simon are in a heated conversation over the scheme. Simon says, ” I don’t want any entanglement with a girl. Women are destructive to a man’s career…listen, Dan, I know that girl…she’s just another girl with a fine face.” Dan shoots back, “I’m not asking you to take that fine face home with you, we only trying to help boost the fans’ confidence in you both.” Simon relents: “Dan, you are impossible.”
What we behold is censured by our eyes…Whoever loved that loved not at first sight– Christopher Marlowe.
At the meeting, Simon sits opposite Cindy. Cindy’s manager introduces her and Simon’s manager does so too. Of course, working in the same market, both Cindy and Simon remark that they have heard of each other before and have heard their songs. Something happens to both of them right there at that moment, but they couldn’t rightly place their hands on it. Something clicks: they have fallen in love at first sight. Both Simon and Cindy’s fiery attack on either business partners and girls and men who romantically come across them completely change. Cindy’s face lowered but she all the time sneaks a sideways look at Simon while she eats. Simon is in a gentlemanly spirit at this meeting, and he initiates a call to Cindy the next day. Their managers are impressed and hopeful. They cut a song together in the studio amidst jokes and lovely touches of laughter. Simon and Cindy fall in love, no longer the fake, but actual love that could make each of them beat up on their pillows and painfully shed tears. At the end of the movie, Simon comes after Cindy when she left his house crying and with tears rolling down his cheeks, wants her back, and he says: “Come back home, Cindy.”
Come live with me and be my love, And we will all the pleasure prove, That valleys, groves, hills, and fields, Woods, or steeply mountains yield-Christopher Marlowe.
When that the entertainment journalist has chased both Simon and Cindy all over town, skeptical of the relationship that exists between the two stars, they finally come to terms that Cindy and Simon are romantically involved. Simon isn’t a gay and Cindy isn’t a lesbian. They’re both stars who didn’t trust the phallic desires both men and women brought on to them. They never believed the fake relationships just to get closer to their money and fame, and their beds, but patiently wait for the right person, the right moment even as their youthful hormones raged in them. Deji and Sammy are disappointed in their earlier belief about the stars.
Wedding Party Reloaded is a story that echoes a derivation of Hero and Leander, the Elizabethan tale as told by Christopher Marlowe. Names like Cindy and Simon could be derivatives of Cynthia and Cymon-that’s how Christopher Marlowe spells his character’s name in the story. Hero was a beautiful virgin whom Apollo courted for her hair, who lived in the tower in Sestos of Hellespont. Leander was a youthful, handsome man on the other side of the straight in Abydos. So attractive was he, even the goddess Venus sheds tears for his love, Cynthia wished him to put his arms around her, and the goddess Jove might have fed from his palm. He was handsome than most men, and some swore he was a maid in man’s attire.
Both Leander and Hero were suspected of gay and lesbian habits as they never fall in love with nor god nor goddess nor man. But the day Leander and Hero set eyes upon each other, they fall in love immediately. Leander used to swim across the straight to Hero’s room, but one night Leander drowned, and Hero was not knowing how to live without Leander, jumped the cliff to her death.
I’m not accusing the writer to have taken after Christopher Marlowe, even himself, Christopher Marlowe, took after the Greeks and their mythology. A great love story this is, acted by exceptional players. I’m not asking too much but honestly; I missed the sensations on the airwave, evening entertainment news on televisions, newspaper peddlers hailing the names of Simon’s and Cindy’s latest hit. Some beautiful song that would play over credit crawls so that I can whistle it in the shower.