Movie Review

The VENDOR.

The Vendor is a comedy film that is mediocrely written and directed by Odunlade Adekola. He presented a tale of a young man’s misfortune in a fiercely forceful way. The movie features a range of actors like: Odunlade Adekola, Adunni Ade, Jide Kosoko and Pa James.

The Vendor is a story about a young man, Gbadebo Godwin Akunwunmi (Odunlade Adekola), who is abandoned by his wealthy politician father and has to sort out life alone. Having to do several menial jobs, fall in love and eventually, luck meets him when he is reunited with his father (Jide Kosoko) and welcomed into the life of affluence.

The plot of this movie is weak and boring, with no organized sequence whatsoever. The Vendor is a mish-mash of disjointed scenarios that portray a lot of unnecessary messages. It felt like Odunlade, being popularly known for his countless mimical facial expressions on social media, simply created a 2-hour movie just to sell even more mimical facial expressions and probably endorsement deals. The Vendor is one movie that has no business in the cinemas instead, it should be developed into a Television series.  

The directing of this movie is poor to say the least. Watching it, I kept on asking myself why some scenes made it into the final piece. I mean, a large chunk of the movie could have been cut away and we would still have gotten the message; like what was the relevance of he going to his friend’s house and dancing to the drummers in front of the house? Why were there even drummers in front of the house? And then the part where he was mocking his friend’s mother because she was an illiterate and was able to travel to China. He lost me there.

The plot was so weak that the attempt for a plot twist was a total failure, like how did his father suddenly come out from nowhere and change the course of his life. I believe a background story as to why his father abandoned him and where his mother was, could have made the twist more acceptable but I guess they were running out of time or story ideas.  

The sound effect and cinematography were other aspects of this movie that I was dissatisfied with. The sound effects were very off! You would think the editor was watching an entirely different movie when he was allotting the sounds. The cinematography is particularly sad for me because just when I was beginning to boast about the quality of Nollywood’s cinematography, then this happens. The movie was filled with scenes that had poor lightings and mediocre camera shots. 

Amidst this much distaste, I would like to take a moment to applaud the makeup in this movie, simple and neat. Even though, Adunni’s complexion could have been a big contribution to this, I still liked it.

Now let’s talk about the actors:

First and probably the only person I was extremely pleased with was Adunni’s character. She played the calm yet no-nonsense oyibo lady very effortlessly. She was real and believable. I particularly liked the scenes where she woke up from the bad dreams, especially the one where she kissed Godwin, I could feel her irritation from my seat. She killed her performance.

It is safe to say that Odunlade achieved his purpose with this movie (that is if all he wanted out of this was to be more of a trending topic on social media), because almost no scene went by without he giving us one comical facial expression or the other. He did a decent job.

Pa James of Papa Ajasco fame came with his usual idiosyncrasies. Each scene he featured in takes you back to his time in Papa Ajasco and Company. One could almost hear his unspoken plea to bring back his days in the TV series. 

The other characters were either too forced or somewhat irrelevant. Like Emeka the gateman; how be he an unrefined Igbo man, was unnecessarily loud and distasteful. Through his short while in the movie, he dabbled between being funny and irritating.

In summary, by now, it should be very evident that I was not pleased with a large aspect of this movie. On a scale of zero to five, I’d rate this movie a 1.5.

I ought not to recommend this movie but if you are looking on how to pass time at the cinema and you do not mind spending your cash doing so. Else, save yourself the money, time and very possibly traffic to and fro.

Go, see the movie, have fun and tell me what you feel about it in the comment section below. Hopefully, the next time I go see a movie I can get your verbal reaction of what you think about the movie #Wink

Full Cast

Odunlade Adekola – Gbadebo Godwin Akunwunmi

Madam – Adunni Ade

Politician – Jide Kosoko

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……….Talk2urHommie……….