Bluerain Entertainment presents Alexx Ekubo (Bryan Mba), Syndy Emade (Candy), Solange Ojong (Christelle), Miss Li (Mrs.Ayuk), Screenplay Karl Safindah; Director of Photography, Renne Etta; Executive Producers, Kume Floribert, Syndy Emade; Producer, Syndy Emade, Karl Safindah; Director, Achille Brice. © 2017
I had finished reviewing Kambili, and I went back on Netflix to search for my next adventure. There, I saw Alexx Ekubo in the trailer, and I held my breath, scrolled back, boom! My boy, Alexx, for real, featuring in A Man For The Weekend. I crowed like a rooster in heat when I saw him in the lineup. I love this guy like I did Elliot, Nonso Diobi, Francis Duru, Van Vicker, Majid Michel. Heavens wouldn’t forgive me if I left behind John Dumelo. Prince David Osei to Majid Michel, in Deadly Affair (2012) “Wait till when…(beat) so, do I have to go ahead and keep fucking your wife?” God, where are they now! Yes, I’m yelling because I miss these faces. Those boyish and ignorant faces on the Nollywood screen.
Let’s consider Francis Duru in Eve (1993), acting alongside Nollywood giants like Omotola Jalade Ekeinde and Olu Jacobs. That seems like a century ago. Remember Gary Cooper, James Cagney, Gene Kelly, Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, just to name a few. Clark Gable, in 38 years, appeared in 70 movies. Proportionately he appeared in 1.8 films a year. Many factors could be responsible for that. For instance, film technology. But the advantage this golden age Hollywood enjoyed was that the audience was never overfed with actors’ faces. Matter of fact, the audience hunger for them on the screen. Appearances were sparring, so they stick with the quality.
In Nollywood, Francis Duru, from 1993-2021, appeared in about 96 films. In 28 years, Duru appeared in 3.5 films a year. Now we can see the reason why the early washup of these talents. Of course, Nollywood production machinery is in high gear. Sparing appearances could be the difference as a cautionary sense to this new crop of actors and actresses. Alexx Ekubo is the kid I am looking out for. I care for him, and I want him to have an extended stay in the Nollywood business. Accepting every script as it falls on one’s desk isn’t actually the way to go.
There’s not much to A Man For The Weekend we haven’t seen in Nollywood before. By dramatic art formula, the plot is simple and shallow. Here: A young intern dude, Bryan (Alexx Ekubo), handsome and knows how to play his card around beautiful women, gets hired for three months as an intern in a company headed by a young and beautiful woman. Candy (Synde Emande) is a sexually starved and overworked boss lady who shows disdain for the intern at first sight. She couldn’t get Bryan’s name right and tosses onto him the documents she wants Bryan to copy. A Nollywood movie buff might know where this story goes from here.
Candy’s mother wants her over for thanksgiving, “Bring me a man…I have not much longer to live.” Candy borrows Bryan for the weekend trip to her mother. You don’t want to miss the scene for that arrangement to bring Bryan home to mama. And that’s where Candy complicated things for herself. First, her ego, then she accidentally falls in absolute natural love with Bryan. The first time he meets Candy that morning in the office was when Bryan was clowning. Bryan soon developed loving eyes that told the way he looks down below, at her, from the upper office window, I imagined him saying, “My boss, I must fuck that bitch.” Confident. In the scene when Candy summons Bryan in her office to make her proposal for the weekend:
“I know this might sound…I promise. And you will be doing me a huge favor.”
Bryan, “Now it makes perfect sense. This explains your change in attitude…your niceness, your politeness, you even remembered my name. This is what it’s about, right? You were buttering me up for this, weren’t you?… You want me to pretend to be your man for the weekend? What for?”
Candy, “Because I’m paying.”
Bryan (Beat), “When do we leave?”
“Tomorrow. 12 pm. I’ll pick you up….”
“I’ll be there, 1:00 pm.”
Bryan is hot for Candy and falls lucky when she hired him as a stand-in for the weekend, even as he tries to hide his face. Plus, there will be cash payments commensurate with the quality of representation. Bryan calls her bluff. The deal is on.
The storyline and its conclusion are apparent, though. It’s like standing on one bank of a stream talking to another on the other side. One can see where Candy and Bryan will end this dramatic shenanigan. Don’t guess; It will be the female fumbling with her finger, ashamed to come up with a word, any word, loving words to appease Bryan for her folly. Now when a story plot is this shallow and predictable, the audience gonna feel juked. They’ll be telling themselves, “There’s nothing new and exciting here.” I don’t want to say I had the same experience as the audience might. It doesn’t matter as long as they are in the majority. I mean the audience.
As a matter of fact, the audience inwardly shall compare A man For The Weekend to the Seven And A Half Dates (2018). Seven And A Half Date producers must have watched the earlier, A Man For The Weekend several times during production. The star-studded show of Seven And A Half Dates featuring Jim Iyke, Mercy Johnson, Toyin Abraham, and Frank Donga is about pressuring one daughter to choose a husband and bring him over to the parents. Mercy Johnson’s father sets her up with numerous blind dates to find a husband in that film. These were against her sister’s remarkable relationship with her husband, the parents perceived. As it turns out, her sister lived a miserable relationship.
Candy herself confesses to borrowing Bryan for the occasion just to please her mother. She lied. But she stood vindicated when the family learned that Estelle’s glorious and remarkable relationship with her husband, Richard (Nchifor Valery), was a fraud. It’s like she, too, has a score against them. She rests assured no one will prosecute her in the family, and she carries her head high. Candy is to A Man For The Weekend, what Besola Gomez was to Seven And Half Dates.
Synde Emande is from Cameroonian woods and has remarkable productions to her credit and could be counted among female African producers like Sarah Hassan and Shirley Frimpong. I admire these young and brave talents cropping up from every available wood in Africa. To put together a shoot is no small feat. Don’t get me wrong for saying this: “A woman who organizes the production of films like 40 Sticks, PoTaTo-PoTAHTo, and especially 40 Sticks which is shot seventy-five percent, at night, in the dark, in the woods, in the forest, could be a hassle. Pain in the to-do. Synde Emande could learn from those two. Originality counts. With all its glitter and caviar, A Man For The Weekend is dramatically lightweight.