Dioni Visions Entertainment presents, Omoni Oboli (Michelle), Alex Ekubo (Obama), Chinedu Ikediezu (Young Kenechi), Emilyn Johnson Ekpo (Caro), Jude Chukwuka (Chief Uba), Taiwo Familoni (Chike), Joseph Benjamin (Kenichi), Yvonne Jegede (Sandra), Anthony Monjaro (Prince). The screenplay, Director, Omoni Oboli; Director of Photography, John Demps. © 2015
Yet again, I run into Omoni Oboli (Michelle). The last time I saw her, she pitted against her husband in a gubernatorial election for the Ondo State in Love is War (2019). There, she gets plunged into national politics but had to learn fast how to wade through the murky political waters, and navigate its tricky terrain. Here in The First Lady, she’s teaming with Alex Ekubo (Obama), the notorious character in Lagos Cougars (2013). And yet again, I run into Joseph Benjamin since I had him in a company in Kiss and Tell (2011) with Monalisa Chinda. Oh, he was gorgeous enough to sweep that sweet thing, Monalisa off her feet. Here, he’s shrunk to the height of Chinedu Ikediezu and disappears almost for an excellent three-fourth of screen time.
Here’s what I’m laboring to tell you. The First Lady has two plots. Delta Atlantic airline ticket sales owner is ready to retire but waits for his son to return from abroad to take over, and not his nephew who would want to, but no. His nephew gets slighted by being called a “small boy” by his uncle. Begrudged, he runs into a mysterious character at a bar (Mirror Boy?) with whom he bonded to level with his uncle. The shadowy figure makes his uncle’s son Kenechi (Joseph Benjamin) shrink to the level of two and a half feet, real-life small boy, Kenechi (Chinedu Ikediezu).
The other plot which I don’t want to refer to as opposing is the grand plot: A character called, Obama (Alex Ekubo), and his partner, Oboni Oboli, an Ashawo, live and feed by prostituting Michelle. And on two occasions, she has brushes with death, until she runs into Small Kenechi in an alley as both were running from the police. Here, the two plots meet, and the story leads us to Small Kenechi and Michelle, to the family home of Kenechi in Asaba. The ailing father dies anyway as long as he sets his eyes on his son, though a dwarf, he is now.
I later, in my moment of solace, thought of the purpose of this production. I mean the essence of the story. Is there a message? Is it intended as a comedy? Why can a veteran screenwriter, producer, and director present such a project? I can grapple with the only answer here. Right here. She needed a Summer Stock kind of a project. Some projects to fill in the gap. It won’t amount to anything, but just a project on which we can practice and sharpen our profession.
The use of Chinedu Ikediezu (Small Kenechi) in this story as the mysterious figure is cheezy for my critical viewing. Haven’t we seen Osita Iheme in Mirror Boy (2011) as the spirit figure of the dead king and father of Tejan? Someone definitely, didn’t want such similarities. One more use of these two characters, Osita Iheme and Chinedu Ikediezu, in such roles, will seem a cliché.
A strange new actor would have played Michelle’s character in the business. I don’t care, Alex Ekubo had still played Obama. He’s fit for such roles in most of the movies I watched. He extorts most women in his roles. Not Omoni Oboli. She’s not convincing here. Performing art is about believabilities. This movie is like watching Desmond Elliot and Mercy Johnson playing criminals in a film I once attended; it was After the Wedding (2006), I guess. By every look and standard, they never looked the part. You can see the tiredness on their faces. Playing criminals and assuming the faces of criminals take a whole lot. Instead of delivering the dialogues, they were practically lifting it off the pages. And their enthusiasm was devoid of energy. Unbelievable! I had just watched Omoni Oboli superbly feature in Love is War (2019). Here I am watching her as a hustler on the sidewalk at a thoroughfare as an Ashawo, taking slaps from Alex Ekubo, because she short-changes him. Not cool.
When your favorite actor plays parts out of her range, your attention is more like on her believability in the role. However, I tried to tell myself, “Oh Author, it’s just a movie,” yet, I can’t get to adjust my belief. If this project intends to produce Michelle and Obama parody, it falls short. There’s not a single line that cracked me up; I guess neither you. The work is neither a satire nor paradoxical; A paradox could be witty, comical statements. I do not find that here. Not in Small Kenechi’s performance, he looks dragged into the part; nor Sandra (Yvonne Jegede), she seems a joke; nor Caro (Emilyn Johnson Ekpo). Maybe, not really. I pull back and watch The First Lady in its entirety, just in case I’m missing something; I attempted to look at it as a satire. It still doesn’t pass.
The First Lady isn’t making a statement. Even if it wanted to, it wouldn’t because it can’t pull it from thin air, for instance, Joseph Williams couldn’t make a sensible line in the story. His entire presence is more like a cameo, and when he sits behind the desk in his father’s office, the summation of plot number one, he seems so out of place. As I said earlier, this project is more or less, an auxiliary project. One that we pull from the mountain of scripts in our file, off the shelf, dust it off and produce, until a script like Love is War, comes along. It’s all good.