“A Case of Great Acting & Terrible Execution!” Franklin Ugobude Reviews The Tatu Movie

When I saw the trailer for the Tatu movie, I was excited and thought it would be a breath of fresh air. It was different, kinda similar to the movies that we pay no attention to on Africa Magic… but still great in its own way. The summary was pretty cliche, but it still piqued my interest. I had made up my mind to see it when it was released in the cinemas.

The movie is a contemporary take on the classic African epic adventure story: a fast-paced action centred around the conflict arising from a mother’s quest to have a child and all the complications that follow. It features Segun Arinze, Desmond Elliot, Funlola Aofiyebi-Raimi, Rahama Sadau, Sambasa Nzeribe, Gabriel Afolayan, Hafiz Oyetoro and Frank Donga amidst others.

Less than thirty minutes into the movie, however, I was utterly disappointed. The acting was excellent, no doubt. I enjoyed watching Gabriel Afolayan, and maybe it’s the Airtel ad rubbing off on me, but he was great. He overdid it sometimes, but overall, he was brilliant.

Then there was Sambasa Nzeribe, who practically had a non-speaking role, but still killed it. Rahama Sadau was a delight to watch and her acting was superb during the last hour of the movie.

Now, let’s get to what was wrong with the movie. Even though the acting was amazing, there was a lot of things that went wrong. First, there were a lot of irrelevant scenes in the movie. There were scenes where I couldn’t comprehend what was going on and scenes that I questioned the importance of. For instance, Sambasa’s character is supposed to be a protector to Rahama. Rahama flees the village, with help from her mother and a priest and then, he (Sambasa) is sent to bring her back. For some weird reason, he always found her when she was about to, or had just engaged in sexual relations, but couldn’t find her at other times.

Also, I think the movie was poorly researched. I was thrown off by the fact that, a movie that shows the life of nuns in training, depict the nuns making the sign of the cross in the right way. Even five-year-old Catholics know how to do this. The priest and the Mother Superior had long rosary beads hanging from their necks, which is not the norm. Do we even talk about the costumes for the nuns and the Mother Superior? The mother superior had a bright sequined outfit for all the scenes in the movie and acrylic nails seen in one of the scenes. It was absolutely terrible and took away from the beauty of the movie.

Notwithstanding, the set design for the movie was decent. I really liked the village setting and the effort made into building the sets. Also, the song played at the end of the movie, Kilimanjaro by Evelle, was great. I cannot say the same for the music effects in the movie, which was just like your typical old Nollywood effects.

In conclusion, Tatu was an average movie, but it would have been a lot better movie if the producers paid a little more attention to detail.