Movie Review:

                                              

Picture Perfect…

Picture perfect is yet another cliché romantic comedy that tells the tale of the coming together of two individuals, of different sex. Tope Alake, (director) and Biodun Stephen (writer and producer) teamed up to create a not so impressive movie.

Picture perfect is a narrative of a young and industrious Nigerian lady, Kumbi, who happens to be single and okay with it. Of course she gets pressured by her friend Kiksy to find herself a man. After many failed hookups by Kiksy, Kumbi finally settles with Jobe, a miscreant, who was ready and willing to become the better man by Kumbi’s standards. In my opinion, Picture Perfect is an Isoken narrated in a different way.

The characters:

There was a complete mismatch in the casting of important roles in this movie; like why on earth didn’t Bisola play Kumbi and Mary, Kiksy? And the extras should be applauded for not literally fainting on set; felt like they really needed our encouragement to stay focused with their acting, or their discomfort would flood out the whole set like the 8^th of July Lagos flood (well Lagos Island flood).

Jobe (Bolanle Ninalowo) was an exciting character. Bolanle interpreted the role like no other; he was totally believable and brought a refreshing air to the movie. In my opinion, the movie, in totality, was a ploy to show the world what a sizzling actor Bolanle is.

Kumbi (Mary Njoku) was supposed to be the main character in the movie, but she sold this spot cheaply to the other actors. Her character was more confusing than it was convincing. Was she a ghetto girl or what? How is it that she grew up in the same hood as a renowned Lagos tout and could not speak clean Yoruba? How can a Yoruba speaking lady, who grew up in the slum, have a broken down car in the dead of the night and speak in a foreign accent to the touts? In Lagos? Where did pidgin English go to? I could easily say she faked her accent so much that she started believing she was classy, but a faked accent doesn’t take away the languages you can originally speak from you.

I know Mary to be a good actress, so I was certain she was out of her comfort zone in this one. One of two things could have been done to portray her character properly; either Kumbi had been an Igbo lady, which would have allowed Mary speak her mother tongue fluently,or the role be played by another actress who could switch both sides.

This movie is certainly Bisola Aiyeola’s first big gig in the acting scene after Big Brother Nigeria and she used it to pass an important message: A new spice is being introduced to Nollywood. Just like her role in “Skinny girl in transit”, Kiksy was a very unexplored character, lacking a proper build up; but she still gave a remarkable performance. Her originality was oozing in every scene she featured in. It was clear that all she wanted to do as Kiksy was win herself new fans and she sure did that. Touché.

The plot was not necessarily outstanding or fresh. By now, it is no news that we are tired of Nollywood scriptwriters making us seem like God who knows the end from the beginning. And this was the case with Picture Perfect. From the get go, we knew that Kumbi was going to end up with Jobe. What we didn’t know was how this was going to happen.

The movie started out really slow and disjointed, it was until thirty minutes into it that a proper story started to build up. The attempts to twist things wasn’t successful, because it wasn’t believable, like: How did Jobe locate Kumbi? Is Lagos that small? Or how Kumbi showed her ghetto side… Err, nah, that didn’t work out fine too.

On a lighter note, the lighting was top notch, apart from the shadow we saw at the scene where Kumbi’s car broke down and the touts were trying to extort her. Thumbs up to the cinematography. The costumes were really beautiful, it added a bit color to the movie.

This movie isn’t a total no no for you, if you are in the mood for a two-hour kill time movie and a good laugh. In summary, my ratings for this movie, on a scale of zero to five, with a lot of struggle between one and a half and two, I give this movie a two.

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……….Talk2urHommie……….