tw Movie Ticket: 10 Days In Sun City

 

Personally, I wasn’t much of a fan of AY’s 30 days in Atlanta and so I didn’t bother with the second ‘Akpos’ movie, A trip to Jamaica, which didn’t make much waves either. But coming across the trailer for 10 days in Sun City did arouse some curiosity in me that I couldn’t ignore. Undeniably, the quite hilarious trailer was brimming with promises, mostly thanks to the fact that the movie is in fact very star-studded.

So, there I was, in a chilly cinema hall with about 12-15 people, already devouring my popcorn and drink as I anticipated the movie which I was quite excited to see for the sole purpose of quenching my curiosity.

The story unfolds In Lagos, Nigeria where we see Akpos (AY Makun) and his beautiful girlfriend, Bianca (Adesua Etomi) at a certain Monica’s (Mercy Johnson) house. Monica and Akpos are old friends from Warri, where she moved from to settle in Lagos. Akpos tells ‘Monique’ – her nickname – his intent to prepare Bianca for a beauty pageant, but Monica has other ideas for the ‘pure’ girl and tries to introduce her to the life of prostitution – this is how Monique earns her income. Monica’s impure intentions makes Akpos leave her house, and he ends up in the house of another ‘friend’ Seyi (Falz) who is with him till Bianca eventually does win the pageant.

Bianca catches the eye of a wealthy alluring man, Otunba Ayoola Williams (Richard Mofe-Damijo) who turns out to be our Villain. She has to go for a 10-day trip to South Africa to be the face of the multinational Otawi cosmetics owned by Otunba upon her win. She insists that she can’t go without her manager, Akpos.

The rest of the drama that unfolds majorly centres around issues arising around the couple which include Otunba’s attempt to kick Akpos out of the picture in other to marry Bianca.

Other characters such as 2face, Gbenro Ajibade, Fathia Balogun, Uti Nwachukwu, Yvonne Jegede, Alexx Ekubo, Miguel Nunez Jr., Amandaa Du Pont, Thenjiwe Moseley, Celeste Ntuli and many more also performed to their best to give life to this movie

The plot of the story is indeed a far cry from the previous ‘Akpos’ instalment, and we owe our thanks to the writer-director, Kehinde Ogunlola who did a good job, especially with the technical aspect, which was exceptional.

The movie, however, isn’t one worth seeing again.

As in the usual AY style, there were a lot of recycled jokes and cliché themes that seemed to suck the thrill out of this movie. I feel that a lot of scenes that should have earned humorous reactions, such as Monique’s role, were over exaggerated and unoriginal.

The characterization was splendid, but I won’t quite agree with the role of Bianca being given to Adesua Etomi because at times where I expected to see more of the inner Warri in her, she presented herself as a total opposite of her boyfriend, which was quite a bore.

There were also mistakes that I can’t quite understand how they were overlooked: for example, in Bianca and Otunba’s day out, she changed her outfits thrice while Akpos seemed to have remained in a club through most of it.

How possible is that?

I think I found myself trying to milk out the comedy in most of the scenes, especially ones that were obviously intent on creating humour: for example, in the scene where we Otunba tries to compel Akpos to leave to America with a large sum of cash and an American passport, Akpos makes a poor attempt at pronouncing ‘Lost Angeles’ instead of saying ‘Los Angeles’.

The movie was disappointingly quite predictable and lacked any moment I could easily identify as the climax which would make it easily forgettable in a matter of moments after you leave the cinema hall.

But with all the inconsistencies and rough patches, I can say that I did enjoy the way the scenes merged into themselves systematically, the stunning sceneries that makes for an eye catching tourist site, and Falz’s character as Seyi which had me almost in tears and few moments in-between.

Well, I can’t deny the fact that I’m curious about the next idea to pop up in AY’s head despite it all.

Let’s hope Bianca doesn’t somehow disappear much like other major characters in the previous movies…