Film One presents Latif Adedemije (Larry), Ademola Adedoyin (Alex), Iremide Adeoye (Tenage Tunde), Lilian Afugbai (Maria), Gbemi Akinlade (Amanda), Timini Egbuson (Tunde), Charles Inojie (Plato), Obi Maduegbuna (Demi), Ayo Mogaji (Mama), Tope Olowoniyan (Sophia), Lexan Peters (Fola). Cinematographer, Nora Awolowo; Producers, Esse Akwawa, Felix Alaita, Moses Babatope, Mimi Bartels, Sidney Esiri.Edith Nwekenta, Kene Okwuosa, Fortunate Wilfred Ndidi, Abisola Yussuf; Director, Sidney Esiri. © 2022
There are certain family norms and mores most families or tribes look upon with scorn. My family mores wouldn’t allow the son or daughter gets up away from the dinner bowl and leave elders eating. Or, one mustn’t sit shaking hands and welcoming a visitor. Better yet, one must always pick the seeds of rice that fall from one’s spoon or morsel to the floor––this is the food, my elders claim, that remains in one’s stomach on Judgment Day.
My ancestors must be belly-full in Hades awaiting Judgment Day, with those crumbs they picked off the floor at dinner time. For us who break those unwritten traditions and mores, an invisible man living in the sky watches everything we do. And He will send us there into hell fire and we burn in torture and anguish forever. Or we could go to our graves with a guilty conscience, if not smitten by thunder and lightning.
I can’t review The Order of Things without referencing or paralleling it to Seven and A Half Dates (2018). Both movies are themes of parents urging their children, in place of …Half Dates, Bisola Gomez (Mercy Johnson), to look for a husband since her younger sister already got married. Her father keeps setting her up with blind dates: a pastor’s son, an Internet troll, an anti-feminist, and another, who hates his mother with passion. All fall short until on her seventh date, she comes across an Adore DIY magazine columnist, Jason Lawal (Jim Iyke). Their meeting was not formal but anyhow became half of the eighth suitor.
Sidney Esiri’s The Order of Things follows the pattern of …Half Dates. Tunde (Timini Egbuson), gets engaged to Sophia (Tope Olowonniyan) and brings the good news to Mama (Ayo Mogagi), his mother. He is rebuffed by Mama, “Oh yes, you have to wait for your older brother to get married first.” Sophia is disparaged, but at the same time plays it cool since she loves her fiance. Demi (Obi Maduegbuna), the older brother of Tunde is not the married type. He is a computer nerd and his world ends with inventing gadgets and apps. Tunde and Sophia have to go to work if Demi should marry before they get their way.
The fun starts:
Like its sister ….Half Date, The Order of Things, the quest for dates and a lasting wife starts on a wrong footing. “My Mom has cancer and she wants me to get married before she dies.” Demi (Obi Maduegbuna) plays the sympathy card on the first date, ending with water splashed on his face. He has never been out there like his younger brother, Tunde (Timini Egbuson). He has the “killer eyes no girl wants to look twice at.” To make it easier for him, Tunde takes him to a dating consultant, Larry (Lateef Adedimeji). What a fluke and a fraud! He hooks our boy up with a bloodsucking date, whose teeth turn into fangs with a snap of a finger. Scary!
Demi has gone through his fifth dates but no luck. Yet. Sophia (Tope Olowoniyan), wanting to put Demi’s dating and marrying affairs out of the way so she and Tunde would be married, hires a bimbo, Maria (Lilian Afegbai) for Demi, sitting by himself, runs into a lonely bespectacled Toyin Lawani at the club, who by the look of it must be a nerd and his fifth date. They get to talking and invites her to dinner at his Mama’s house. The evening is ruined because Maria shows up and drives Toyin away.
Demi eventually marries Toyin, just as Biola marries Jason in …Half Dates. There wouldn’t be much substance to these two movies if we disregard the odysseys Biola and Demi take to find lasting relationships. Imagine Biola running into Jason, while she awaiting her seventh blind date to show up. And there he sits, Jason I mean, a Writer in his own right, donning a French beret, leaning on the right side of his head, reminiscence of Richard Wright, Tyler E. Stovall, or William Gardner Smith, Afro-American Writers in the early nineteen century Paris. And the bespectacled Toyin sitting across the table from Demi. There is simple chemistry. Just as Toyin is comfortable in her skin when around Demi, he is likewise.
What Toyin Abraham is to Seven and A Half Dates who throws in comic relief in the movie, so is Lateef Adedimeji in The Order of Things. You should see him with the misplaced and unfit Indian turban he set on his head. Laughable. “Can you please take that hat?” Tunde asks the Indian mantrik impersonator. “97 percent of our clients are married now. And we give discount wedding planning.” Demi reads the card, that Larry gives him, “Single female 27, highly religious, seeking male 25 to 35….That it? That’s me and about 50 million guys in Lagos.” Larry’s system relies on, “compatibility over appearance.” One should be with Tunde and Demi in Larry’s office, he will tickle you to death.
We sometimes watch a movie and that movie changes our lives forever. I want to stress here that our different responses to every film are personal, supported by our idiosyncrasies. But one common thing both Seven and A Half Dates and The Order of Things tell us is, there is always a man or a woman out there for every man or woman. When I see Demi and his younger brother Tunde dancing in a double wedding to Sophia and Toyin, I feel like sending these couples virtual wedding congratulatory cards.