Inkblot and Film One production A Bunmi Ajaikaiye Film present Ramsey Nouah (Toyosi Akinyele), Omoni Oboli (Ebere Akinyele), Dorcas Shola Fapson (Jumoke Fashanu), Jemima Osunde (Ireti Akinyele), Syrl Law (PastorTheophilus), Sambasa Nzerebe (Emeka Okadigbo), Nnandozie Onyiriuka (Okey). Director, Bunmi Ajakaiye; Director of Photography, Olawale Adebayo, Richard Mabaku; Screenplay, Chinaza Onuzo; Producer, Chinaza Onuzo; co-producers, Babangida Abdulai, Isioma Osaje; Assoc. Producers, Joy Naadi; Exec. Producers, Moses Babatope, Kene Mkparu, Kene Okwuosa; (C) 2017.
Did the producers of this film have a drone over my home spying on My wife and I? How could they be so true to the life of My Wife and I? It is a rom-com: some spouses standing in each other’s face; the mother wants to wear the pants instead of the dad. The children in the background panicking and confused as to which side they choose between Mom and Dad. Is that not me and my wife with our two kids, a boy, and a girl, of high school ages? They are adolescences, with not so much knowledge about mom and dad but they well know about children and the bees.
Ramsey Nouah (Toyosi Akinyele) plays it cool, self-confident in himself, as the head of the (Akinyele) family, but standing to a woman, oh, a wife, Ebere Akinyele (Omoni Oboli) comfortable too in her skin, who wants to take control of the family affairs, and sway the kids to her side against the dad, is classic with women. Mr. and Mrs. Akinyele, call a party and while everyone is having fun downstairs, Akinyele’s family heads are upstairs bumping their heads and standing in each other’s face. They have fought over trivial things, bigger things, at first privately and now it spills over to the public and even the kids are feeling the pinch. They are seriously thinking of a divorce before they kill each other.
Ebere, (O.S), “All these years, these wasted years, sticking with you all these years…Oh, don’t even go there. Marrying you was the biggest mistake of my life!”
Toyosi (O.S), “Then correct the mistake. What do you think, am gonna beg you!?”
Ebere, (O.S), “You don’t have the brains to beg!”
Toyosi, “God, you’re such a bitch!”
In a scene, Toyosi’s mother Bisi Akinyele (Ngozi Nwosu), and uncle both stunned, scamper to the upper level to Toyosi and Ebere. Husband and wife are out of breath. The uncle vigorously wiggles his fingers at both. “You see that this kind of nonsense will make your children disrespect you…”
Toyosi, “Let us face reality. We have tried but we failed.”
Uncle, “…imagine both of you fighting like market women. Over what, flight ticket to Paris? So, you people are thinking of divorce? (Turns to his sister) These children will put us in trouble.”
Toyosi, “It was not in the plan. She’s spoiling the kids.”
Ebere boastful, “I’m paying for it.”
Toyos’ mother, “Toyo is that what you really want? Is that what you want? You remember your father abandoned me and you when you were young (historical perspective). Now you want to do the same?”
Toyosi, “Mama we have tried, we have tried.”
Uncle, “Then try harder!”
Ebere, “Okay, we will try again.”
Uncle, “Now you are talking…Just a little effort and you people will throw all this divorce nonsense behind you.”
The dialogue and commotion in this opening scene introduce us to the characters we are going to have for the evening company in our living rooms. Toyosi and his wife, Ebere, in the presence of their adolescent twins, Ireti Akinyele (Jemima Osunde) and Okey Akinyele (Nnadozie Onyiriuka), and invited guests, are going through a marital crisis. It comes to bare over air flight ticket Ebere bought for the twins to go abroad unknown to the father of the house. He takes offense. One never wins in the court of wives. “I’m buying it,” she boasts.
Weak minds would say, the devil has gotten hold of the Akinyele family. “I don’t think this is ordinary. It is spiritual. Both of them need deliverance.” One family member declares. The families for both husband and wife seek holy deliverance for the Akinyele family. Good news! They would see Pastor Theophilus (Syrl Law). Pastor Theophilus is a frank and happy-go-lucky man of the collar. And he gets both Toyosi and Ebere in front of him. “Divorce in this present life?” Pastor asks the couple, in a comical but religious tone.
The next day after the visit to the man of God, Toyosi wakes up in Ebere’s nightgown. He yells aloud. He and his wife have been body swapped by God or some unknown power. Except for the voices, Ebere does things like a man, and Toyosi does things and even walks like a woman. Their lives and behaviors are interchanged.
Body swap movies are common in Hollywood since the invention of high-powered movie cameras and editing gadgets. Many such movies have been produced and applauded, the latest of course is Freaky (2020), Change Up (2011), Freaky Friday (2011), and Big (1988). Big is a movie about a 12-year-old Josh Baskin (Tom Hanks), during a traveling carnival, he puts a coin in a machine and wished to be ‘big.’ His wish was granted, and became a 30-year-old man and got a job in a toy factory, but soon, he couldn’t stand the pressures adults experience, so he craved to be a 12-year-old again. For a minute, we really believed that Tom Hanks was a small boy in the body of an adult. Body swap characters are created out of either supernatural elements, as the man of God, Theophilus, does to the Akinyele spouses or cinema techniques.
The one characteristic of body swap movies is that they never grow old. You can go back and watch My Wife and I, several years later, it will always crack you up. And in fact, most of today’s exploits of the sub-genre, only repeat the older ones. My Wife and I is an original story in context. One single element of body swap dramas or stories is it must have to be comical. Funny. How does a character fare well in the new body? For instance, Ebere could no longer walk properly in the high heel shoes. Toyosi walks with his butt way up in the air that got Jumoke Fashanu (Dorcas Shola Fapson) comment on his walking like a woman. Or the Pastor and Ebere:
Pastor, “Twins, double for your trouble! Do not tell me that with this beautiful woman here? There could have been nights of accidental discharge once or twice.”
Ebere angry, “Pastor, this is very inappropriate.”
“Inappropriate? Uh-uh, uh-uh. You would have noticed that the man of God, does not joke with sex…”
The goal of this movie is for two characters to swap body, so each party sees the other as not efficient enough or not fulfilling their roles in the household for the family. At first, they both look at each other objectively, but when reality sets in by owning the other person’s body, the belief system changes and becomes a self-experience reality. A metaphysical subjective experience, sort of. Once, Toyosi and Ebere play each other’s role, fill the pains, the anguish, and make critical decisions, as either a husband or wife, in the end, when they come into their own bodies, they come to value and respect each other. And most of all, they washed their problem under the bridge. The ambition of the screenplay is achieved. That is what body swap movies achieve. Moving from one bad posture to a good and lasting one. Always end on a positive note.
I mustn’t forget to comment on the open scenery Toyosi and Ebere walk across the street and walk on the sidewalk towards the camera. The open scenery, the backdrop, and the activities around them and them walking and conversing, spilling to each other (moment of truth) their gut secret fears of each other, that had plagued them to the point of divorce in the marriage. This wonderful and beautiful scene could be compared only to the Scene in Breakfast at Tiffany (1961) when Audry Hepburn eating the pastry and sipping coffee while looking into Tiffany through the window. Half a century from now, our grandchildren and children might make a pilgrimage to that famous scene, and take a walk across that same spot and walk on the same sidewalk as Toyosi and Ebere did in 2017. Trust me.
Toyosi’s mother made a statement that hits Ramsey Nouah to the core. In real life, gossip has it that his Jewish father abandoned him. To this day, he doesn’t know his father is dead or alive.