Movie Review: ONLY LOVE

Title: ONLY LOVE
Starring: Ini Edo, Rita Dominic, Pat Attah, Olu Jacobs, Alex Usifo, Adaora Ukoh
Producer: Oj productions
Director: Andy Amenechi
Year: 2005
Country: Nigeria
Genre: Drama/Romance
Language: English




Synopsis: Ini Edo is Udoka, a young village orphan, being raised by her stepmother. In true Cinderella fashion, her stepmother hates her and only chooses to educate her own two daughters, while she uses Udoka as a glorifed, much abused househelp. Turns out that Udoka is a childhood friend of the village princess (played by Rita D), who has just returned from studies in America. Udoka was also a childhood love of Uzor, who studied medicine abroad and has just returned to start the village hospital.
Udoka’s stepmother is very jealous of her stepdaugher’s ambitious friendships, and punishes her for her camaraderie with the princess, as well as for her renewed relationship with the very eligible and good looking doctor (Uzor) played by Pat Attah. To further complicate matters, the princess also finds the doctor very attractive, creating a knotty love triangle. In addition, Uzor’s family believes that their American educated doctor son can do better than the poor, unattractive village belle, and would rather prefer to see their son with the princess than with Udoka. When the princess has her graduation party, she invites Udoka and Uzor, who come together, much to her chagrin (as well as that of Udoka’s stepmother). Udoka returns home, and is thrown out by stepmother. She eventually has to take refuge in the palace with her friend the princess, with some very dramatic consequences for her and her relationship with Uzor.
How does the princess resolve her jealousy of her friend’s relationship? How is the love triangle resolved? Who ends up with Uzor?

Trailer:




Review:
Positives:This movie was produced during the “big ban” year in Nollywood, so marketers had to utilize new talent outside of the big 3 (Genevieve, Omotola and SDA). It gave us the unexpected pleasure of witnessing an outstanding performance by Ini Edo. I am not a fan of her “Look at me, I am sexy” roles, but she can play a village girl, that is for sure. She was FIERCE!!

Rita Dominic looked very classy and did good acting as a princess. The stepmother was so mean, she was great. The limp was well pronounced, and made her seem even more wicked. The ladies who played Udoka’s stepsisters were also very convincing as the spoiled stepsister, as well as the more sympathetic but helpless one.

In general, it was a nice love story, competent, good acting, good casting, mostly good costuming, although Udoka’s outfit in the last scene was kinda busy. The party scenes were filled with appropriately dressed extras, unlike many Naija movies where it looks like they dragged people off the streets.

Negatives: It was not by any means perfect.
Pat Attah plays the lovelorn doctor, and does a competent job, although a little more emotion would have been nice. After he had not seen his childhood love for 7 years, he just walks in casually and says hi, with very little emotion. And while she was mad, it was like a small tiff, not anger for seven years worth of abandonment. And the love singing! Please! Save us from the singing. If you are curious as to what the Udo, Uzor sunset song means, someone actually translated it for anyone who is interested:

udoka I love you
me and you will leave
let the world say whatever ... I like you

Uzo .. I love you
me and you will leave
let the world say whatever.... your thing is sweeting me
your thing is sweeting me (2x) let the world keep talking .. it's you i like

(Please don't ask about the "thing" and its "sweeting" effect! LOLLLL!! Actually I suspect its a literal translation that may not come across that well in English).

In addition to the singing, there were some really, really, really, realllllly bad special effects. They had to have someone hit by lightening. O boy. It was bad. In addition, there are medical problems that had no scientific explanations, which could only by resolved by a juju man. I no longer have patience for movies that leave logic and resort to passive juju solutions for everything. I think the story could have been told just as well without all the chanting, feathers and eye paint. And it is sad that so many of our people in real life will see the juju man for an ailment before talking to a doctor. So I did not like that. As much as possible, I think our movies should elevate our thinking to a higher level. And then there were scenes that dragged on and one and on and… you get the idea! You learn to watch our movies with the ff button. So I used it where it was needed.

Worldview: This was choke full of strong moral lessons - Strong themes of betrayal, forgiveness and mercy, not looking down on people when they are down because you don’t know the future, giving people the benefit of the doubt. It’s a great movie you can watch with the whole family, and everyone will learn something. Just ignore the singing and the juju!!

You can find more reviews for this movie here

Rating: 7/10

Availability: Big three