Living Life Media presents Uche Jombo (Emilia), Chris Akwarandu (Chief Okocha), Harriet Akinola (Mrs. Anayo), Kendra Chi Aninyei (Rose), Micheal O. Ejoor (Jabez), Executive Producer, Awele J. Hansel; Producer, Thelma Chukwunwem; Screenplay, Adaeze Ibechukwu/Awele Hansel; Director, Seun Afolabi; Director of Photography, Ganiyu Anifowose. © 2024.
It seems Nollywood is revisiting its old movies and making them anew. So, it is with Abuja Runs (2024), a remake of A Trip to Abuja (2003), pp.105-107 Nollywood Movie Reviews. Caged, a film akin to Wreckless Heart (2013), pp.195-196 Nollywood Movie Reviews Vol 1, is part of the trend. In Wreckless Heart, we saw a similar storyline where a woman is stranded for money due to her father’s medical condition. With no money to save his life and the family counting on her to give in to love or marriage, she isn’t willing to commit to a suitor as old as her father. This is the premise of Caged. If you were too young to watch Wreckless Heart (2013), welcome to the new Nollywood––Caged. Videocassette, CD watchers and I were around to watch Olu Jacobs (Lawson) lose Omotola Jalade (Roselyn) to Saint Obi (Johnny), RIP. You can see Lawson’s face when he reluctantly gives Roselyn over to her American returnee boyfriend, Johnny.
Yes, we experienced that in Wreckless Heart when Omotola Jalade fell, no, succumbs to Olu Jacobs because her family couldn’t afford the hospital bill for her father. She gives into a marital affair with a man twice her age. When her long-lost love returns to town with a briefcase full of American street slang, a colloquial and informal language commonly used in the streets of America, she falsely feels redeemed. God, was she lying to herself? This is where we parted ways when we came to the Nollywood version of Caged that features Uche Jombo.Ours is more like holding one to your order because of economic hardship.
A cage doesn’t necessarily mean a four-by-four concrete embodiment that suffocates a claustrophobic person like me. I hate enclosures as in escalators, and that’s why I use stairs every time; escalators drain the living breath out of me. Caged as Uche is in this movie is worse than Omotola in Wreckless Heart. Even with a slap here and there, I mean Roselyn, at least she had the freedom to own a shop and make money for herself, a freedom Uche wouldn’t have, and she only screws herself up when Johnny gets to town from America. Here, Chief befuddles Uche’s dream of writing but only stays home, feeds her face, and gets fat. This physical transformation, from a slim and active woman to a sedentary and overweight one, is a visual representation of her emotional and psychological ‘caging’ in the film. Uche’s father’s friend volunteers to take the tab for his best friend but wants Uche for a wife in return. Olu Jacob demands the same for Omotola.
“Caged” is irrelevant to the title and story theme. It is a bore to most viewers, and I can’t even exclude myself from that demographic. Wreckless Heart has a story. It doesn’t bore us with trivialities that do not advance the story. Johnny and Roselyn were once childhood lovers and Johnny goes abroad with a promise he would come back for Roselyn. What he doesn’t know is, that America isn’t all that we imagine back in Africa, and he gets into marrying to get his papers correct; a process that would take years. Roselyn gets fed up waiting for Johnny and she gets married. Maybe not out of boredom, but she and her mother needed money to care for the ailing father. Then Johnny comes back into town, with all the ghetto slang you could figure. And the long-awaited flame for Johnny, laying dormant in her loins, goes aflame for her long-awaited boyfriend.
Caged is different. I would swear to Christ if Caged didn’t rely so much on the Biblical verses that rejuvenated her faith, she wouldn’t have ended the way she did–liberated from a literal cage. With the help of a young college graduate, Jabez (Michael O. Ejoor), down on his luck to get a good-paying job, but is hired as her driver, knee-deep in Christ and the Bible, her life gets a new meaning in the household of Chief Okocha (Chris Akwanrandu), an occultist.
Chief Okocha being in love with baby Emilia, had taken the childhood picture of the girl and let his gods (Voodoo) tie her and her family fortune to him so that they (the family) could be subjected to him and marry Emilia in the future. The parents’ future is tied to Chief and can’t find any way out until when Emilia’s father gets sick, and Chief comes in to volunteer for the medical bills, as in Wreckless Heart, but he must marry Emilia. No Wahala. Chief gets what he wants, and Emilia marries him. After a series of miscarriages, maltreatment, and abuse of Emilia, Chief’s incessant tantrums cause him to have a heart attack and die in the living room.
In contrast to Wreckless Heart, Lawson didn’t get a heart attack. He honorably gives away Roselyn back to Jimmy. Chief here in Caged had a problem of his own: the incessant barrage of tantrums and his loathsomeness of the Bible in his household caused him a fatal heart attack. He hated everything, Christ. In contrast, the new driver, Jabez, being a devout Christian, and who takes Emilia around while the chief is frequently away, grows closer to her, and in faith. Emilia sees humanness in him; hence they easily get married with the Chief’s passing. In a comparison of Wreckless Heart from the point of the premise–younger women half the age of suitors, Wreckless Heart has a way out of denouement that is more natural than that of Caged. Caged plants Jabez a devout Christian, as Emilia’s driver to redeem her from Chief, a direct opposite character to him. The question that remains is, what would Emilia and Jabez have done; there are instances of feelings growing between them beyond the driver and boss lady relationship even before the heart attack. I see why Adaeze Ibechukwu and co-writer, Awele Hansel get rid of him, out of the way before the story takes the form of melodrama.
Seventeen years ago, 2008 to be precise, when Uche Elendu (Princess) Queen Nwokoye (Halima) and Uche Jombo (Esther) gang up in Mac-Collins Chidebe’s film, Koko Babes, pp.217-218, Nollywood Movie Reviews Vol 1, Uche Jombo was half the weight she appears in Caged––handy little sweet thing, not flamboyant, one could say of her then. I hardly recognized her here until she started to deliver her lines. Again, I must state this about the physical body of actresses and actors on film on the Nollywood production line. Even as the Average African admires robust builds––big nyaase and full breasts, the camera adds more weight to the talent in the entertainment world and movies, which both hampers the aesthetic makeup of the film and therefore a turn-off for the audience. If we want to continue acting, one will have to trim or go easy on the weight. A weight of 110-150 lbs. is an accepted size for a cinema camera; Genevieve Nnaji for example. I find this movie has a deep religious undertone. Christening the lead player Jabez is a little coy. Check Chronicles 4:10. Prayer of Jabez.