BDaniels Production present, Clinton Joshua (Andrew), Precious K. Charles (Vivian), Ralf Edu (Mr. Johnson), Amara Uwaechi (Mrs. Edu), Ogechukwu Anasor (Beauty), Johnson Y.S (Lawyer), Sydney Dyala (Chief Udenshi). Director, Chidi Anyanwu Chidox; Screenplay, Jemimah Amonachini; Producer/Executive Producer, Bridget Daniels Imasuen; Director of Photography, Onugbor O. Prosper. © 2024
Home Coming sent nostalgic feelings in me. My mind returns to my school chums and the expectations of reuniting with them. The echoes of laughter like yesteryears shall briefly fill the hallways again this weekend. The boarding house rogue who wouldn’t go to the study hall, but later, when everybody left, would rummage through our chop boxes. Most of us had fallen by the wayside; most have become lawyers, engineers, and doctors. The principal had passed on long ago. We used to pull pranks on Old Momo, the cook, but they say he died too long ago. He saved us from lots of the Boarding home superintendent’s rattan. This time, all the staff are new faces and younger. “Mr. Abbot,” we called him, a Pakistani foreign teacher who crammed an entire physics textbook into his head. He was good, I can vouch—a most modest man. Munawar could be a dinosaur to the present crop of students.
And the promise of meeting the graduation queen who dated the brightest of our classmates, who you heard got married, moved to Europe, and had many kids. They are both here for the homecoming. Then you see him; he has grown a potbelly. Oh, this swanky fifth-form guy. I heard his dad was a diamond dealer, and I believed so because he was the most dressed in our class; he was lucky a United Methodist Girls’ School teacher, older than him by three to four years, fell in love with him. We held this guy in the highest esteem; every young student wanted to be like Gabriel. One thing about the two lovers: they never cared about what the Bo town’s whole secondary school-going population gossiped about them.
And you uncannily find out you don’t regret your life station as most men would. You pat your back; you aren’t bad off anyway, especially when you bring yourself to the picnic activities at the soccer field and run into Gabriel. He is not what you thought he turned out to be. He has lost some teeth and even walks with a cane. He’s bad off. My goodness! Then I ran into the fellow; what was his name? (“Lefthand puss” boarding home nickname)? Johnson, yes, Johnson! He had turned armed rubber, spent time in jail, and came out of jail limping from old gun wounds and had taken to heavy drinking. He is not okay and ashamed of himself as he waves at me. That evening, the Home Coming grand ball, like we used to have, and there was always a dance competition between houses––I was in “Nassar House” ––before everyone crawled back to their distant holes and homes and carried with them the new knowledge of friends we still have and some we have lost. That is the Homecoming I imagined! But what about me just broached someone’s synopsis for a full-fledged screenplay?
The Home Coming scene in my introduction is a creative loafing, a possible screenplay, aside from the Nollywood formulaic run-of-the-mill narrative structure. Nollywood is grossing six Homecoming titles, which are a matter of morphing into episodes. Thank God! This is a two-word claim (Home Coming). You will seemingly foresee where the narrative’s taking you. In no time, you find this wealthy family whose younger brother and wife die mysteriously and inherit the brother’s wealth and children, maltreating them and denying them every opportunity to either advance themselves or enjoy any of their parent’s wealth.
Home Coming here takes a slight at Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark, but there is no murder. Even Nollywood’s Unwritten (2009), pp. 215-266, Nollywood Movie Reviews Vol 1, brought a similar storyline to the theatres. Olu Jacobs, Francis Duru, and Bimbo Akintola starred in the movie, and it is Akinlosotu Femi Despy’s screenplay and directorial debut—a beautiful storyline with a theme based on coming home about a greedy uncle who put his nephew Francis Duru through hell to squander his inheritance. It is much more intricate than Home Coming, I can assure you.
It’s not intricate, as I said: Andrew (Clinton Joshua) becomes wary of his uncle’s treatment of him and his sister, Vivian (Precious K. Charles), in Mr. Johnson’s (Ralf Edu) household. As a bright young man growing up, protective of his only sister, and about to go on campus to attend school, he questions his uncle about why he shouldn’t let Vivian attend school. In the moment of truth in the story, you can hear in Vivian’s strenuous voice how her uncle, Mr. Johnson, could keep a daughter of Jeffery and Agnes Johnson, a PhD holder’s daughter, home without schooling. Instead, Vivian becomes a housemaid while their only spoilt brat of a daughter, Beauty (Ogechukwu Anasor), goes globetrotting, feasting, and lavishing on the money she didn’t work for; Andrew’s father had left. Andrew goes on to research the lawyer (Johnson Y. S), whom Mr. Johnson has told him couldn’t have a hold on.
Yet it happened that Mr. Johnson got hold of Chief Udenshi (Sidney Dyala) to arrange a business deal for them during a dinner at their mansion. The Chief sees Vivian and falls in love with her deceptively. Chief has been a business partner of the younger Johnson, who happens to be Andrew and Vivian’s father. Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, having no clue what’s going on, wage Vivian for a pawn to pull a deal to their benefit–Vivian must fall in love with Chief, a man three times her age, to benefit from the agreement. Meanwhile, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson didn’t know Chief had gotten air of the treatments they had been giving Andrew and his sister Vivian, and he came to hear the truth of it all. It all comes out in due time.
Like all other Nollywood movies exploiting this theme (greedy uncles and inheritance), a waterdown claim in Home Coming ends with the nephew or niece walking into their parents’ wealth. If this is so, there’s not much of a story here because we have seen it all: hybrids of all sorts. What will make us twist and turn in our seats is if the characters or the story takes them to take another turn, like in Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark, when there is murder. We may appreciate characters who go out of their element and take a dagger, nowadays, a .25 magnum at his uncle. But no. We don’t have to cross the traditional norm of African cinema. We must call lawyers, the juju warrior with chalk on his face, community elders, and aunts to adjudicate.
Imagine Mr. Johnson being subdued, brought to his knees, and sitting on the floor by his wife, Mrs. Johnson (Amara Uwaechi), with security guards commanding them. Today is the cleaning day, as Andrew brings the truth out of them. Andrew’s gang has temporarily restrained their daughter and threatens to cut out her fingers if the parents refuse his demand to get all the documents his father left in his care. Here, Clinton Joshua does what Francis Duru couldn’t do in Unwritten. Mr. Johnson hands over papers for his parents’ properties. After reviewing about 400 Nollywood movies and commenting, I found this is the most exploited theme besides romance and rom-coms. This two-word phrase title never hit us on the side of the head with surprise, and to a film buff, this is the type that the audience could walk out on.