Nollywood’s unprecedented boom in recent times has still left many Nigerians shellshocked. Since Kunle Afolayan released The Figurine, the releases have so far been top notch – with exciting, educating, and hilarious plots – in what is known as the third largest movie industry in the world.
Even in Nigerian cinemas, there are more Nollywood movies being screened compared to their Hollywood counterparts. In fact, the new-age movies have been so good, that save for Telemundo and Zee World, many Nigerians feel they have no business with the Bollywood industry ever again.
Sadly, with all these achievements, there are still many things that the industry either lacks or are still doing too much of – especially the petty and unnecessary things that we wish they’d stopped doing long ago.
Very very predictable
There are many movies in Nollywood that lets us unknowingly lets us know what’s going to happen. A lot of the time, the title gives us a 60% idea of the plot details, while other times, the movie’s soundtrack will give us a 90% idea. From those two ‘errors in judgement,’ many viewers can actually tell what is either going to happen next or how the movie will end. This makes us bother why we decided to watch it in the first place.
Unnecessary Sequels
Compared to Hollywood movies who wouldn’t make sequels without good reasons, Nollywood movies bask in the idea of making sequels. Worse off, they spend unnecessary time-frames in a particular scene, doing unnecessary things just so the movie will be long enough to make a sequel inevitable. And most times, the movies do not even need sequels.
No Actual Plot/Storyline
Save for the movies that get screened in cinemas nationwide, a lot of the home videos do not have storylines nor an active script. Most of them feel like the drama young children usually act on stage – just know what the scene is about and then come up with appropriate lines yourself. Normally, this is meant to show creativity in young kids, but in the case of the bad Nigerian movies, it is like drinking bile.
Horrible acting, especially in shooting scenes
Nollywood movies never get shooting scenes right. Maybe we aren’t there yet or the directors are just very, very lazy people (my money is on the latter). The blanks used are more like the knockouts and fireworks we set off during Christman season, and to make matters worse, the accident scenes are distasteful. They almost always usually end with the car swerving ‘uncontrollably’ from left-right until the accident happens which always leaves the driver pressing the horn with his unconscious head – like airbags aren’t a thing.
Too much witchcraft
Can a Yoruba movie be called one if it doesn’t have witchcraft or juju? Or is it possible for Igbo movies to have village scenes without an evil uncle or aunt going to the dibia to do some unnecessary evil things that the plot line can actually do without? It shows lack of everything that Nollywood needs to be and we are actually really tired of this.