By: Olamilekan Oke
The Nigeria movie industry (Nollywood) has been notable for its amateur movie production that leaves viewers wondering if the movies were either shot by professionals or beginners. You and I can agree that it is very easy to predict the end of a Nollywood movie after seeing the first two scenes. Yes, it’s that terrible. We have seen instances in Nollywood movies where the doctor places a stethoscope on the patient’s head, where ghosts look ‘left and right’ before crossing the road. Oh! Africa magic epic and Yoruba make things worse. We know the prince always falls in love with one of the maids and the only symptom of pregnancy is vomiting.
Nollywood has also been known for using of casts wrongly. Who casts OdunladeAdekola as a secondary school student? Or uses Sanyeri as a pastor? You know the answer right? Nollywood movie producers and directors! Let’s not even talk about the crummy production at the end and how it looks like a movie shot and produced in 2007.
King of Boys 1 was first released on 20th of October, 2018 and was produced by Kemi Adetiba. It narrates the story of a successful business woman (Eniola Salami), philanthropist with a promising political future. In pursuit of political power, she got caught up in the ‘dirty game’ of politics as she lost her husband and children. Don’t let me spoil the movie for you if you haven’t seen it because I hate spoilers also…
King of Boys 2 was released on Netflix on 27th of August 2021 and I veritably felt the huge step up in the movie industry. Let’s start with Kemi Adetiba. Kemi Adetiba has been redefying movie writing and production since she produced ‘The wedding Party’ in 2016. She has a very special and unique way of choosing her casts. In ‘The wedding party’, she used Sola Sobowale, AdesuwaEtomi, Banky W, Alibaba, RMD, etc. These guys played their roles in that movie so well and the movie was also shot at nice locations. King of boys is the second movie she’s producing/directing and I can notice a trend in her selections of casts. She makes use of a music star who doesn’t even know about acting to take a lead role in the movie. We’ve seen her do this in ‘The wedding party’ where she used Banky W and now in King of boys, she used Reminisce and Illbliss. She does this to make the general public talk about the movie as everyone will want to see their favorite person play a lead role in a movie.
Kemi Adetiba also applied the ‘a good turn deserves another’ rule with her casts. Talking about the lineup of AdesuwaEmoti and Sola Sobowale. They were both in ‘the wedding party’ and now they’re also in King of boys. Same as RMD. This is a very nice move other producers should emulate. Let’s talk about how the casts perfectly did their jobs.
Sola Sobowale: She played the role of Eniola Salami. A politician, philanthropist and a business woman. We’ve all known her to be one of the best at what she does. She has the crazy, good and ugly side as we’ve seen her display that in the wedding party and other movies she acted. Talking about someone playing a perfect role in a movie? Sola Sobowale did play a perfect role.
Reminisce: Alaga Ibile as we all know him as a musician took the role of a gang leader as his cast was ‘Makanaki’. Being a musician, Reminisce really surprised us as he took the role of a tout, robber and killer so well.
Illbliss: Also being a musician who has little or nothing to do with movies, Illbliss took the bull by the horns and played a perfect role. Just a normal Igbo business man stuff.
RMD: He was Reverend Ifeanyi in the movie and I wasn’t expecting anything less from him because he is a professional actor and has been doing that for decades.
Nollywood as a movie industry has been doing a lot of great works lately and it’s something we are all proud of. Wedding party, King of boys, Citation etc. have proved to us that it can only get better. Citation for example was shot in three different countries (Nigeria, Cape Verde and Senegal). Also, the wedding party was shot in Nigeria and Dubai. There are smiles on the face of the populace when they see these movies, because we are all happy to see a great change in our movie productions. Though this costs the producers a lot, but it was worth it.
I feel Nollywood can get youths to start watching their movies again if they constantly give us movies in this pattern. Shoot at nice locations, use the right casts, make the production clear and also make it available to download. Most youths no longer watch Nigerian movies again because of the lame storylines and poor executions. A large amount of Nigerian youths no longer watch Nigerian movies. They rather watch K dramas, Indian movies, and American movies than Nollywood movies.
Hopefully we constantly get more producers like Kunle Afolayan and Kemi Adetiba that will help to fine tune the Nollywood industry. If you’re yet to see king of Boys, you should see it.
