I read “Why “I Come Lagos” is the last Elvis Chucks’ film I will be seeing” by Wilfred Okiche, published on Y!Naija on July 22nd, 2014, with tears in my eyes. At a point, I felt downcast, as though I was the filmmaker. Something reeled in me and I was completely puzzled; there is a popular saying which goes like this: “Critics are like eunuchs in a harem. They know how it is done, but they can’t do it.” For the most part, the reviewer screams at the end of the review in third person: “This is the last Elvis Chucks film this critic will be seeing.”
It’s funny how everyone who has an opinion eventually begins to address himself as a critic. I’m not an Elvis Chucks’ apologist, but let us focus on the language of the ‘critic’. For so many reasons, he doesn’t think the film, “I Come Lagos” deserves to be seen. Intellectual snobbery has been an issue in the arts, especially in its consumption among theorists. Filmmaking, as far as I am concerned, is not a child’s play. It is actually, the most difficult form of art. It goes from ideas development, content arrangement, scriptwriting, casting, filming (which is an array of so many problems) to post production (another problem), then to circulation. This is when it gets to the hands of these critics, who comfortably glue their posteriors in their seats and begin to re-imagine the imagination of other people.
For the critic, Nse Ikpe-Etim should not have accepted the role; she should not have at all, which brings us to the issue of stereotype and boxing people up, just because you think they should not clamour for a change in characterisation. If there is nothing that makes me feel it was a great decision to accept the role, it is the fact that we have come to a certain point in Nollywood where we know the actors who play the bad characters and the ones who play the good characters; that is actually the dearth of characterisation and peculiarity to acting.
Acting is a skill, which has to be versatile and Nse has completely mesmerized the critic by delving into the life of a character the critic has envisaged she would not have done. So, it is apparent that the critic has a crush on Nse, so he is angry that his imaginary love decides to play a village girl, when she has done similar thing in Kunle Afolayan’s PhoneSwap, which is a different film altogether. The painful part of this review is that the critic is subjectively subjective, because there are many people out there; the bulk of which makes a larger part of the consumers of Nollywood films, that genuinely love the film and would have gone home from the cinema happy.
It is not a review that the critic has written. It’s a personal attack on the director, the cast and crew. There is no summary of the film. There is a need to not engage in malapropism and using verbose sentences to confuse the readers who should know that every piece of art, has its own audience. So, it is possible this is not the kind of film the critic watches, so he is angered that he is forced by his employer to go and waste his time on a production that doesn’t add anything to his emotional sentiments. It’s from this angle that the critic failed to understand the essence of the film. This is not a review. It’s also possible that the critic didn’t watch the film, didn’t hear any of the dialogue and didn’t even pay attention to details, because he was not in the mood to see the film, because it is his job, which he doesn’t like. He already said that at the beginning of his ‘criticism.’
A review starts with a summary of a work of art. This is not so in Mr. Okiche’s review. He forgot to tell us the premise of the story. He forgot to say anything about the film. His main anger is that Elvis Chucks has been making terrible films; his anger is justified; it’s been there. Inside of him, for a long time. It’s also possible that most critics are people who are angry over something they themselves cannot make. It’s possible that Mr. Okiche wonders how Elvis Chucks funds his movies, yet, can’t make the kind of film he wants to watch. But that is where the issue lies. Many filmmakers who have realised that the intellectual clique isn’t their market have figured ways to make more films to make more money.
At the just concluded Nollywood Week Paris, filmmaker, Mildred Okwo, who happens to be one of the most hardworking filmmakers in Nigeria, said something amazingly poignant about film marketing in Nigeria. She made people understand that the Twitter generation and Facebook critics of Nollywood are not the ones they are making films for, because these people don’t buy films. The Nollywood markets are in the rural areas and in relatively small towns. And these people don’t even have access to internet to read these reviews the critics are dishing out. Criticism is an opinion which every man must have. It doesn’t need to be used to pull down the morale of an artist. If an artist produces a work, it is because it stems from his heart.
“I Come Lagos” is the story of a young woman from a rural setting who moves to Lagos and does incredible things. It’s a comedy and should be seen as such. Hampering on the intellectual capacity of the film to draw out emotional sentiments from you is like wagging your buttocks to a monkey to be raped. Sometimes, people go to the cinemas to see their stories and come out, disappointed when magical realism is played. However we may want to summarise it, every critic should begin to think of a way to tell these stories they imagine in their heads and start telling them the way they want to tell them.
For now, Mr. Okiche has not written a ‘review’, but a gruesome attack on Mr. Elvis Chucks, his cast and crew.
Below is the trailer of the movie, “I Come Lagos”.
Onyeka Nwelue is award-winning author of The Abyssinian Boy (DADA Books, 2009) and Burnt (Hattus, 2014). He’s currently Professor of African Studies and Literature at Instituto d’Amicis, Puebla in Mexico.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.
