This movie was premiered at the Lighthouse Camberwell on Saturday 26th April 2014. There were organizational issues which included the movie starting pretty late leading to the director and one of the promoters Ikenna Obi doing damage control and having to apologise at the end of the movie. Those present on the red carpet were members of the cast including Ikenna Obi, Olivia Eze, Fatima Jebe Maada Bio, Collins Archie-Pearce, Bella Gassama, Sidi Diallo, members of Nollywood UK including Theordora Ibekwe Oyebade, Ayo Oyebade, Marie Gomez, Toksy Bello, Niyi Towolawi, M A Benson, Riyike Alayande. Also noticeable were Gospel singer Kenneth Benson, Uvi Orogun. The night started with entertainment by Saxy on the saxophone and and Jdove. The MC for the night was Collins Archie-Pearce.
Storyline: The Soul was written, produced, directed by Sidi Diallo who
also played the lead character. The movie was
centred around a tale of two beautiful
sisters (Mary and Hannah) both top models, in love with the same man (Alex).
However the man was only in love with one of them. Love brought conflict, envy
and hate between the sisters which ended in one of the sisters being murdered.
The storyline was great
but the production and director’s cut were appalling and all over the place and
it was so hard to follow. As a critic, watching the first 15 minutes of a
movie, I should have an idea of the theme of the movie. However, in this movie,
the beginning of the movie did not correlate with the rest of the movie and I
am still trying to understand the relevance.
Although we are told that the story
is based on a true life story, part of the storyline was unrealistic. A typical example was where there was a murder enquiry and a
serving police officer asks to be paid to carry out the investigation in the UK
and is drunk. No suspected gets interviewed under caution in a police station,
This is all phony and unrealistic. I am of the view that when you want to tell
a story, you must research properly how to present the story to the public. It
might have been better if the policeman was presented as a PI rather than a
policeman. For a murder enquiry, no policeman would be interviewing witnesses
in the park and in some cases not taking notes but in a police station under
caution and witnesses making witness statements.
While I appreciate effort and
understand that this was meant to be based on a real life story, I cannot give
more than 4.5 for the storyline.
Cast: The cast included Sidi Diallo,
Fatima Jabbe Maada Bio, Uche Odoputa, Ikenna Obi, Collins Archie-Pearce, Atto
Eric, Ferguson Jack, Bella Gassama, Olivia Eze, Happiness, Chica Michelle,
Craig Melbourne, Labinot Zeqiri. Joy Oyakhilome, Christianah Awotayo, Princess
Abiye and LB Brown.
There were a mix of experience and
non experience. As a reviewer and critic, I need to look at the good and the
bad sides. Let us start with the positives. Some of the cast were natural and
brought their experience to play. In this regard, I would like to mention
Collins, Uche, Fatima, Ikenna & Olivia as they used their experience to try
and tell the story.
However, some of the cast were just
like they crammed their lines and were all over the movie. Diction is also
important when trying to tell a story. If one is trying to play American or
British with an accent, they need to have that accent or just be themselves and
stick to what they know. In this movie, I could tell that even Sidy was African
which was good, but some of the actresses tried to speak in British accent and
they failed woefully. I must also mention consistency. In some scenes for
example Collins was presented as a father looking old even to his teeth and in
some scenes he was looking young even though he was still playing the role of
the father. I saw him in a different light when he looked old and that was
good, but was spoilt when they forgot the role he was actually playing. For the
cast, for effort, I would award 5.5
Sound: One could hear buzzy sounds in
most scenes. An example was when mother and son were speaking at the house.
Also sometimes background music and buzzy noises overshadow the voices of cast.
A typical example was at the party and at Ben's home. There was also poor sound
mix at the modelling office between Ann and Mike. In most cases the buzzes and
music made it difficult to hear what the cast was actually saying. Bottom line,
the sound was not too good. I would award 4.5
for sound.
Picture quality: in some cases, there
was not enough headroom, most of the character was were not in the camera frame as was
evident in most of the scenes. In
the birthday scene, there was no headroom and it seemed that the camera was
moving. In this scene, the pictures were so shaky. In some cases, the picture was so dark and it
seemed as if the colour grading was not in existence. In my honest opinion, I think the recording was not
professionally done. In some cases, these issues made the movie difficult to
watch. I would recommend that the Director should go back and watch the movie
and see how some of these issues can be addressed. For picture quality, I would
award 4.
Overall: To me, if the movie was
properly researched and the story told properly, my review would have been
different. Like I said earlier, the story in itself is good but the packaging
was the problem in my honest view. When people begin to sleep in a movie, it
tells a story. I have been to late night movies and seen movies and still not
slept, I have watched movies including Nollywood in languages I don’t
understand with good sub-titles and still did not sleep. There were elements of
humour in this movie and there was passion and enthusiasm form the writer.
However, I would
recommend that in future, as a script writer, the same person should not
produce and direct so that someone else can see what migh have been missed, Two
eyes they say are better than one. Our passion at Babso.org is to see Nollywood
Movies compare to Hollywood Movies in the near future, but this would take
research, resilience and excellence. Overall, I would issue this movie 5.5. I think Sidy should see these as positive criticisms that
would enable him go back to the drawing board in his next project.
My overall score out of a possible 50 is 24 which would rate the movie as 4.8 out of a possible 10
Watch the trailer:
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