King of Boys: The Movie Review
A couple of years ago, due to online buzz and peer pressure, I saw the movie King of Boys. Now mind you I’ve been a huge critic of Nollywood movies (modern not African Magic epic).
Without a second thought, I dismissed the movie as bad (with reasons I will be discussing in this article) and that it’s only getting the buzz because it’s better than most stuff Nollywood put out. Well, maybe I was harsh then, or was I?
With the movie now on Netflix alongside a limited series sequel, the buzz is back and it is only right that I watch it again with open-mindedness and see if the problems I observed were still there.
So, I watched it all over again.
Now, it has always been perceived that the problem of Nollywood was and is the budget. While that might have been true previously, that excuse can no longer hold. Modern Nollywood has improved its picture quality. It’s almost world-class right now. They have also been able to make deals and get budgets as huge as 243million naira (which in terms of Hollywood standard is big and classic movies have been made with a much lower budget e.g. Mad Max 1979).
My point is, the picture quality barrier has been broken since. And Nigerians do not expect Avengers Endgame type of CGI or any type of CGI. Most of our stories don’t require that. The problem in modern Nollywood has always been their stories. They always get away with a bad story and bad execution because of good pictures that Nigerians are not usually used to. In the land of the blind right?
Now back to the movie, Kemi Adetiba got a lot of things right in this movie. The acting and dialogue were awesome. I have nothing but good things to say about Toni Tones and Sola Sobowale. They were so magnificent, especially Toni Tones (not to take anything from Sola but how many times do you see a Nollywood movie where the younger version is nothing like the older version?).
I can’t even mention one time they’ve been alike apart from this movie. It was like she studied Sola’s acting and did it perfectly or Kemi sat both of them down and they formed the Nigerian female Vito Corleone. This is some Robert de Nero /Marlon Brando shii (excuse my French)
The supporting cast was good too which is also very important apart from minor bugs. Adesua was awesome. Jide too. I felt like both Illbliss and Reminisce could be better but generally acting was great.
The dialogue was also great. It felt naturally Nigerian. Yoruba when it needed to be, English when it was right, and Pidgin when it was right. Nollywood rarely gives you that feeling but Kemi did very well there.
Now to what made me say it could have been a great movie in my opinion.
Kemi had 3 hours! 3hours! That’s enough time to tell the whole story. That’s three episodes of Game of Thrones. Goodfellas, Wolf of Wall Street, and even The Godfather’s runtime. Yet she falls short and leaves this underwhelming feeling.
Now, I will never understand how a broken and traumatized woman like Eniola Salami transformed within a day (I am guessing the news of her escape would be announced immediately) to get enough power, influence, and strategy to kill the new king of the underworld with all his political backing.
I am not saying Eniola can’t regain her throne. Everyone surely loves a happy ending but Kemi failed to show us how she achieved it. It was like she hit a huge block in the middle and just went straight to the end. And that left a very underwhelming feeling despite the “feel good” ending.
It felt like there were still a lot of stories to tell and she(Kemi) didn’t know how to.
I think she spent so much time in the first half of the movie. A lot of scenes should have been deleted. Time was never the problem like I pointed out with those classic movies. 3 hours is enough time to execute all these.
Enough said, for now, I look forward to seeing the newly released series which I will give a review after seeing.
Overall, for a Nollywood movie, it’s a great step in the right direction and a very enjoyable movie with great acting. But if we are judging it like every other movie, great acting couldn’t save that big problem.
The movie is a 5/10 for me (a big leap from 2/10 in 2019). The middle is always as important as the beginning and the end.
