Toyin Abraham Productions & Bigsam Media present Toyin Abraham (Isla), Sambasa Nzeribe (Mike), Chioma Akpotha (Ejika), Femi Adebayo (Dayo), Chiwetalu Agu (Chief Ajanaku), Bimbe Ademoyan (Nana) Dele Odule (Chief Obanikoro), Mrs. Bayray Mcnwizu (Aduni). The story, Screenplay, Abraham Toyin, Charles Uwagbai Jeje, Obiodun Stephen (Mrs. Ajanaku), Damelare Awe; Producer, Toyin Abraham; Executive Producers, Toyin Abraham, Samuel Olatunji; Director of Photography, Abdullai Yusuf; Director, Charles Uwagbai. ©(2018)
You all remember the Ghost (1990) movie that featured Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore and Whoopie Goldberg, right? Well, you have seen The Ghost and the Tout. Don’t expect too much of the characteristics of a Ghost, in here. The Ghost and The Tout have some comic scenes and lines that make your evening grande. A character called Isila (Toyin Abraham) takes the cake in The Ghost and The Tout, as Whoopie does in Ghost, and she won for the Best Actress in a Supporting Role that year at the Academy. Toyin Abraham needs to get some accolade for playing such an incredible Supporting Role here.
The Ghost and The Tout is a non-linear comedy. Mike (Sambasa Nzeribe) gets murdered in traffic on a bright day, on the eve of his wedding to beautiful Aduni (Bayray Mcnwizu), and there are three suspects. Mike’s father, Chief Ajanaku (Chiwetalu Agu), had a severe quarrel with a business partner, Chief Obanikoro (Dele Odule), and have both sworn revenge on each other. When the murder of Mike occurs, his father points to his business partner. His secretary had overheard him mention ‘three and kill off all of them’ over the phone with somebody. She assumes her boss was referring to the three people in the car when Mike gets murdered. He was referring to the three rams he needed for sacrifice.
Mike’s ex-fiance is not yet over him and, on one occasion, tried to flag him down in the traffic, and he couldn’t stop. Shortly after, Mike and Dayo get attacked at a roadside tire shop, and Dayo got knocked side his head, and attackers ran away. We have reason to believe that she had hired the three killers to attempt on Mike’s life, according to a phone conversation she had someone on the phone shortly before the attack. Dayo canceled out, calling the police for her but swear her to the Yoruba gods to punish her.
At home, Aduni (Bayray Mcnwizu) has a Ghanian girlfriend Nana, (Bimbe Ademoyan), who stays with her, and who for some reason, is not all-out happy for her best friend’s impending wedding. While sitting by the bereaved intended bride, Aduni, and Nana wiping her tears, helping her in her demise when her phone rings and walks outside to talk. Aduni follows and eavesdrops on her conversation, from which she heard Nana saying to someone, “…but, you didn’t have to go that far.” Aduni becomes suspicious of her too. Nana later explains that her sister had attacked her Ghanian fiancé’s girlfriend and beats her mercilessly.
Mike’s ghost wouldn’t rest in peace. The investigation into Mike’s death isn’t going anywhere, and he wants the real culprit caught. He teams up with a tout, Isila (Toyin Abrahim). Mike’s relationship with Isila is at first riotous. “I am from the ghetto, you say you are a ghost, then I’m a tout.” It takes many incidents for Isila to rest assured Mike is a ghost and wants to use her as a liaison to the outside world. Most neighbors in the ghetto think Isila is taking some high powered drugs or she’s going out of her mind. Group of women jumps her when the ghost takes her outside Dayo’s gate, and three women ran her off. Still, Mike follows her. He wants her to go to his fiancé’s house. Isila refuses:
Mike (ghost), “I’m sorry.”
Isila, “Please, am I the one that killed you?”
A passerby, “Say no to drugs. You don’t listen.”
Mike (ghost), “Sorry, Isila.”
Isila, “I will slap you, or push you in front of a moving car, and you will die…oh, he’s already dead.”
Mike (ghost), “Help me, Isila. Help me.”
Isila, “Do you know what I went through there?”
Mike (ghost), “Okay, let’s go to my fiancé’s place. Please, Isila, please.”
Isila, “It’s like you want to see madness today…I swear if you follow me, I’m going to strip naked…you sent me somewhere. I got beat up. For what? No, am I the one that killed you?…See what you have done, now they’re trying to take me to Yaba.”
Isila is too angry with Mike, and because she’s talking to herself as everybody thinks she is, two mental home officers want to take her to the Yaba mental hospital, and she runs from them. A hilarious scene that will crack you up.
Once again, she’s having fun at the carnival, Mike appears to her and tells Isila, there’s a price on her head; she must tell Aduni a message, about the person who killed him. At Aduni’s place, Isila tells her Dayo has something to do with his death. While at it, Dayo gets there and gets confronted with the accusation. He puts both Aduni and Isila at gunpoint, but just in time, the police get there too and arrest him.
The Ghost and The Tout is an entertaining narrative comedy. In Isila’s character, we find a real crackpot. I have seen dope heads crack heads, cocaine heads, and alcoholics in my life, Isila walked straight into their characters, that she not mimicking or impersonating, but lives the life in real life. She nails it. She talks like one, she flips in anger one minute, and playing and laughing and dancing the next. The scene in Aduni’s closet, using her colognes and perfumes on different parts of her body, is so reminiscent of a crackhead I once knew. Take your eyes off a crackhead, she’ll help herself to your whatever. She plays a role that demands her to be half in her mind and a half plumb crazy. That’s what her part requires, a hustler with an attitude. Boy, she nails it.
Dayo’s part portrays the devil. He’s been down and out on his luck when Mike offers him a second chance but soon becomes Mike’s hidden enemy. He stages the roadside tire shop attack on him and Mike, and the same three guys made the final attack on him, which finally murders him, all because of jealousy.
Dayo (to Isila) “Hey, you call the police? Come out here. So, you’re the one seeing the ghost? Let me tell you something. I killed Mike.”
Aduni (aghast), “What?”
Dayo, “Yes, I killed him. Yes, because I envy him. I’m jealous of Mike. What is it? Is Mike the only man in the world? Mike’s father very rich.”
Aduni, “He was your best friend.”
Dayo, “Ah Mike, he must die in heaven again. I’ll sit on the 35 million Naira.”
Aduni, “How could you kill your best friend?”
Dayo, “If you say that again, I’ll blow you…”
This dialogue exchanges between Dayo and Aduni says it all about the character of Dayo and what role he plays. We can parallel Dayo’s attitude to Carl’s (Tony Goldwyn), the friend of Sam (Patrick Swayze), in Ghost. Tony is Sam’s best friend at the bank, but Sam won’t partake of the embezzlement going on at the bank, and therefore, Carl has to kill him. Sam finds another spirit in the subway (Vincent Schiavelli) that teaches him the ropes to communicate with the human world, just the way our Mike in his disembodied spirit, in The Ghost and The Tout, finds Isila, the tout on the street. Entertaining and heartwarming, this ghost story is.