Matilda Lambert Production present, Matilda Lambert (Boma), Ik Ogbonna (Prince Leonard), Blossom Chukwujekwu (Dr. Tobi), Linda Osifo (Nemi), Emem Inwang (Matilda), Pete Edochie (King of Okirka), Shaffey Bello (Queen of Okirika), Okon Imeh Bishop (Kala), Chinenye Nnebe (Awajinma), Santoye (Prince Santoye), Femi Adebayo Salami (Yoruba Suitor). The story, Matilda Lambert; Screenplay, Christabella Ike Mary Jane Okonkwo; Producer/Executive Producer, Matilda Lambert; Director, Moses Inwang, Director of Photography, Imeh Frank Emmanuel. © 2020
Unroyal. In 1936, King Edward V111 rejected the crown to marry a divorced American woman. Princess Margaret fell in love with a married man. In our lifetime, Princess Diana, in an interview, talked about Prince Charles’ affairs. We have seen Prince Andrew embroiled in a disgraceful hanky panky with an underage prostitute, Virginia Giuffre. The news media never caught afire with that, nor the Edinburg palace disrobed him of his royal regalia and station. These had been royal scandals in history and in our times and more, but none were made ‘unroyal.’
Let me tell you the story in brief. ‘Unroyal,’ according to Merriam Webster, is defined as an adjective, ‘not royal.’ Unroyal as a movie creates The Taming of the Shrew (1967) character of Katherina, the sharp-tongued, insolent, disrespectful, and proud daughter of a prosperous businessman, Baptista of Perdue, in the countryside near Verona. Princess Boma is the daughter of the Okirka king (Pete Edochie). She dismisses the Northern Hausa’s Prince, Sanni Abdallah’s request for marriage with a slap in front of his royal entourage. Next, she shames the Yoruba Prince (Femi Adebayo Salami) by shooing him and his “nonentities” out of her father’s palace. Then comes an Igbo Prince Leonard (Ik Ogbonna) from a neighboring kingdom who wants the hand of Boma. His approach is a high-style grandeur Boma has never seen. She falls for it.
Prince Leonard is a con artist by a considerable measure. He preys on the weakness and insolent and unguarded scorn of Princess Boma (Matilda Lambert):
“So, how was your day, Princess?”
“Don’t get on my nerves, Leo.”
“Am I getting on your nerves, or you’re just stressed? Maybe you’re tense and err… You know what, I have just what you need. See, (he pops a pill in his mouth and kisses her mouth with it). It’s an ecstasy; I know you’ll like it.”
Leonard deliberately feeds his intended royal wife with hallucinogens. The pill is Boma’s baptismal intake of hallucinogen. Leonard puts a tablet in his mouth and kisses Princess Boma with it, and after she swallows a couple, she gets hooked. The drug overdose eventually drove her in front of a van and had a fatal crash, resulting in a coma. She enters an outer body and roams about the world and her father’s palace. Boma’s spirit visits Leo’s house and eavesdrops on Leo’s conversation with his girlfriend, arguing over why she overdoses Boma as if that wasn’t intended and was never in on it. Leonard presents a document to Boma to sign as a witness while under the influence of hallucinogens.
Boma drinks the laced-up ecstasies served to her by Leo’s girlfriend. She staggers to her feet walks to her Rose Royce to return to the palace but gets into a wreck. Poor Princess. Her rudeness, disrespect, and disregard for human beings bring her thus far. Imagine putting her friend, Matilda (Emem Inwang), off her jeep on a freeway because she comments not liking how Boma treats the subjects in the palace and the outer world. Matilda is the best friend she could ever have but doesn’t see it that way.
On numerous occasions, Dr. Tobi (Blossom Chukwujekwu) had shown great interest in the Princess. You remember when he runs into them at a restaurant and congratulates her on her engagement to Leo, “thank you, you can fly away now.” She shoos him away like a fly—life’s ironies. Tobi has always been in love with Boma; has followed her like an afternoon shadow of oneself, very close, but he dares not say so in her face. The same Dr. Tobi helps her recover from the drug overdose. The same Tobi rushes to King of Okirka and tells about the trumped-up trick by Leo to get the Princess and her kingdom to be possessed and turned over to him.
To catalog Boma’s ills to his father’s courtiers, her friend Matilda, and the chefs and well-respected friends, we can condemn our Princess to unroyal class. ‘Inappropriate for royalty’ according to the definition of ‘Unroyal’ by Collins Dictionary. The mishaps and nonsenses in palaces across the globe, and news about them in tabloids, blow off in a week or two. Puff! It all fizzles off into thin air. Our Princess Boma of the Okrika Kingdom is enjoying every bit of her royalness. Sniffing coke and snorting a little bit of crack won’t hurt that we know. She refers to her father’s courtiers: “clowns and rats.” And sweepingly wave them all off, “never to have business in her private life.”
In the end, and before she could get out of the coma with the help of Dr. Tobi, Boma experiences, like purgative, the evils she did to her friends and society in general. She learns how much the people around her hated her for her behavior. Even her trusted lady-in-waiting, Awajinma (Chinenye Nnebe), feels like a brick lifted off her shoulder when she learns of Boma’s demise. “The evil Princess was involved in a ghastly accident that almost took her life. Everyone is so literally happy about this.” Another friend said, “Definitely, she’s not my Princess. Who did she help? She helped you?” Belched out Nemi (Linda Osifo).
We all must have heard a story or two from friends or family members who went into a coma and came out with a different look at the world. My friend pulled out of the coma with a reinvigorating and energetic enthusiasm for his Christian faith and church. He says he spied into heaven during his out-of-body experience. “It is so serene out there, so clean and grey with no sunlight but all the same beautiful. Flowers everywhere! I didn’t want to come back, but the invisible voice in a holy tone that must have been Jesus said to me, “you have an unfinished business down there.” His wavering Christian belief turned staunch, and he became a tithe-paying parishioner. He even declared to join the church choir, only his falsetto voice that could break the pastor’s wine chalice.
Princess Boma had a purgatory experience in a coma. She regrets her misdeeds to her father’s courtiers, to friend Matilda, the ordinary gateman, Kala (Okon Imeh Bishop). While in the outer body, she sees treatments she gave everyone around her and comes face to face with that reality. Once out of it, she prostrates on her knees with a cleansed soul. In a confession to the courtiers, she asks for their forgiveness and mercies. “I’m sorry for all embarrassments and all the insults. All the shame I bring so much shame to this throne. I never intended, and I didn’t know what I was doing. I’m sorry. Please forgive me.” She cries on her knees like a baby.
Princess wants to save her kingdom from the rogue Prince but wants Kala, the once ‘common gatekeeper,’ to help her get Dr. Tobi to the palace. He does so just in time when the King is ready to sign over the kingdom and all its resources to the Prince. The rogue Prince and his elders are round up while Boma pulls through a coma at the hospital. You’ll never guess. Boma marries Dr. Tobi. Princess Boma concludes regretfully in an afterward voiceover, “Many trains arrive at your station. Treat them well whether they leave or stay. Because in life, the table always turns.”
That is the moment of truth in our story and the character of the arrogant, disrespectful Princess Boma. I can work my way from plot to the structure and wade through the muddy waters of content and form in analyzing this story. Boma is a rude and disrespectful Princess who can’t give her time of day to anyone until Prince Leonard shows up. The writers, Christabella Ike Mary and Jane Okonkwo, have to provide us with other incidents and characters to create the body of the story. I’m not sure if this is Matilda’s maiden project as a producer. If it were, I must congratulate her on a narrative that structurally fits Nollywood’s masterpiece.