Dee Dee Films Production presents Gabriel Afolayan (Mustapha) Rahama Sadua (Fanna), Sophie Alakija (Sadiya), Ibrahim Suleiman (Abdul), Rabi’u Rikadwa (Father), Adams Garba (Nura), Iveren Agbo (Ummi). Producer, Rose Abiodun, Rahama Sadau; Screenplay, Daniella Esua Iregbu; Cinematographer, Femi Bomigbola; Director, Shitto Taiwo. © 2023
You tell me if it looks a lot like love. One of those deceptive behavior movies. It’s all greediness. Not even close to love. It’s callousness. I’m not referring to the American version. The American version of A Lot Like Love (2005) is pure romance.: Two strangers keep running and bumping into one another almost around the globe, which could be the work of natural forces bringing them together every time. Aston Kutcher and Amanda Peet. Fate, destiny, and true love are the prominent themes the movie explores. This one here in Niger, Nollywood, is ugly. It is about suicidal greediness and a soapy nature of a drama.
The plot of A Lot Like Love is linear and simple. Abdul (Abdul Suleiman), a not-so-happy face is about to hop on a plane for a holiday in Turkey with his beautiful wife, Fanna (Rahama Sadua) when he is kidnapped, and his wife Fanna is shoved with the butt of a gun, and she falls yonder. Abdul has been abducted; they first need half a million dollars. Fanna is in a pickle here; kidnappers don’t want her telling anyone if she loves her husband. She shares the secret with Sadiya (Sophie Alakija), and Sadiya alarms Mustapha (Gabriel Afolayan).
Hell broke loose in the mansion. Everyone is in a panic. Fanna has almost lost it. The twist in this story is the kidnappers have clever ways, like Alfred Hitchcock’s cold and menacing telephone calls in his movies, eavesdropping on the conversation in the war room. Fanna’s living room is in chaos. She doesn’t want anyone to know about the kidnapping of her husband, Abdul but by way of her connections in the community, Sadiya comes knocking at her door, and Sadiya called Mustapha. Mustapha and Sadiya learn that Abdul was abducted or kidnapped.
The tension in the movie becomes tense and exciting for my viewing pleasure. I’m buffeting in it. That’s what a good script does. Fanna has broken her promise to the kidnappers by unwittingly letting Sadiya and Mustapha into her house. The kidnappers aren’t happy with her, she’s not happy with both Mustapha and Sadiya, either. She wants them gone. To a degree, she accuses Mustapha, by being the product of the ‘street,’ to be the mastermind of her husband’s abduction. Mustapha is disparaged. He is honestly on the side of (Fanna), whom he once loved and still loves. She couldn’t see it his way, she loves her husband.
One can see Mustapha’s face and that hidden anxiety to be near Fanna in her living room when he came to help. Maybe you didn’t but I sense beads of sweat standing on his cheeks as he gets closer to the love for which he can do everything. This is an opportunity Mustapha cherishes; being so close to Fanna is the greatest pleasure his heart could long for. They (Mustapha and Fanna) had loved once but were denied the privilege of marrying because of who he is––a gangster. It hurts him but still keeps the flame in the deeper recess of his heart.
Denying a relationship and marrying Mustapha wasn’t Fanna’s idea––she loved this crude fellow–– but her father, Alhaji Rabi’u Rikadwa’s. Alhaji has his reason: Fanna is the sole inheritor of his wealth and wouldn’t want a character like Mustapha around her. He’ll instead give his daughter over to Abdul, a decent clean-cut, Godfearing, and humble guy that has served in his company for such a long time.
A cousin of mine was once denied the love of his life in marriage because he fooled around with alcohol, which he didn’t make secret of. The love of his life married someone else. Someone else turned out to be an alcoholic and ended up a bum. Fanna marries Abdul as the most decent man of his crowd and denies Mustapha because the community, including Fanna’s father, is a criminal, a hoodlum, and a man of the street. Then Abdul gets kidnapped on the morning of their getaway on an all-expense paid vacation to Turkey. Calamity struck Fanna.
In essence, A Lot Like Love is a little romance story, about two principal characters in the life of Fanna Sadua, a wealthy inheritor daughter of Alhaji Rabi’u Rikadwa. She loves the clean-cut Abdul, the reason she marries him; a decent fellow from the face of it, though laughs as if laughing at his dubious spirit. One could put trust and love in Abdul quickly because of his humble character, the reason why Fanna’s father gave her away to him and let him lead his business endeavors—a schemer of unbelievable type.
Sadiya must have been there when it all started between Mustapha and Fanna, and she was there when it all fell apart. She hates it as well the way things came out. The first person she could think of in Fanna’s dilemma is Mustapha. “Call her mother or father,” he tells Sadiya on the phone. Reluctantly he rushes there, even as he pretends it wasn’t his business.
Whereas Mustapha and Fanna grew up dating and Mustapha dreaming of her being his future wife, he’s hurt by the denial and obstruction of Fanna’s father to let Mustapha marry his daughter. Reason? Mustapha lives on the street and makes an unholy fortune off the streets. The same street experience however got Mustapha to discover that the celebrated Abdul was in cahoot with the housemaid he hired, who was an old criminal partner and a wife of his.
Whoever loved and by a circumstance beyond his/her power that affair is shattered by outside force while remnants of that native feeling still lurked in the hidden crevices of him and the loved one, can see in the eyes of Mustapha and Fanna, those long ago nights when they swore love to each other; when both had the same dream of lasting love. In the absence of the world, while we are not there with them in the room, Fanna has a way of looking at Mustapha––anger mixed with inexplicable feelings. Then Mustapha too. He secretly thanks his good angels for being in a room with Fanna, all to himself, and no Abdul around. See the beads of sweat forming on his cheeks. Poor boy, he only wished Fanna couldn’t have loved somebody else.
After Mustapha has solved the mystery of Abdul’s abduction and his release, his vasectomy not to have kids with Fanna and all, her midnight visit to Mustapha’s apartment is a scene that takes the cake.
Mustapha, “Will he not be worried that you’re here by this time?”
Fanna, “not waking up till morning. (beat) I’ve been a fool, right? Why?”
“You bagged a scammer. You married a scammer.”
Fanna cries and pulls her hair.
“What do I do now.”
“Sit.” He internalized. And shut up. Your daddy said I wasn’t good for you.
I burst into a peal of loud laughter when he commands Fanna like a puppy dog to ‘sit.’ And Mustapha says so with the seriousness and face of a vindicated man. All along, the character she and her father revered turns out to be her savior, and here she is subdued. Does it not look a lot like love?
I found a problem with the claim (title) of this movie, the same I found with The Strength of Faith and Strength to Strength (2008). These two movies with almost the same claims were produced in Nollywood. My warning to them was that in a day of internet and Google surfing, titles easily get lost. The producers of A Lot Like Love would have had a slight difference in title from the American version. All in all, Gabriel Afolayan is right for the part of Mustapha. If she has not retired, enjoying her Nollywood rewards, Omotola Jalade Ekeheinde would have delivered Fanna to the Awards.