After the rousing success of The Wedding Party, Kemi Adetiba dared to defy logic again with a movie that one can’t help but fall in love with; King of Boys.
*** SPOILER ALERT!!! IF YOU HAVEN’T WATCHED KING OF BOYS YET THEN YOU SHOULD STOP READING RIGHT NOW AND INSTEAD WATCH THE TRAILER AND CHECK OUT PHOTOS FROM THE PREMIERE***
THE GOOD
It takes a special kind of crazy to write and direct a three-hour movie in this day and age when people’s attention span is shorter than the weekend after a very long, hard week of non-stop working and traffic, but Kemi Adetiba showed us that her level of crazy topped off with a very inspiring level of genius is the very kind that the Nigerian movie industry CLEARLY NEEDS.
Sola Sobowale is an absolute goddess. She did justice to her role as The King and elder Eniola Salami. Her acting was so pure and natural, that thinking through the stellar veterans in the industry, I don’t think there is any other actress that could have executed the role like Sola Sobowale. Her acting put gangster movies and actors like Pablo Escobar, Ghost, The Godfather, Heisenberg, and others along the line, to shame. All through the movie, Sola Sobowale will make your nerves stand as her raw emotions in the movie will resonate through the screen and start affecting you in ways that you can’t even imagine.
There are very few movies in Nollywood that you can say, “Every actor killed the role“, and King of Boys is definitely among them. Adesua Etomi (Kemi), Ademola Adedoyin (Kiitan), Toni Toones (young Eniola Salami), and veterans like Jide Kosoko (Alhaji Salami), Akin Lewis (Aare Akinwande) even went the extra mile to make the movie just 1% shy of perfection with the kind of acting they put up. It was more than a talent and skill, you would see the extra effort made for the greater good.
Surprisingly, Reminisce and Illbliss were the wild cards in the movie. Who would have thought that both rappers could channel in the lowkey gangster vibe that the rap industry requires of you into a movie. The name “Makanaki” is more than a character now, it is a threat and a challenge to every other director and scriptwriter in Nollywood; if your action-movie characters aren’t as good as Makanaki, then you are better off not bringing that movie to the screen, it’s better you don’t spoil our eyes with nothing up to the standard of “Akorede”.
Kemi Adetiba did dare to make a movie such as this? I am still shellshocked at the level of greatness that King of Boys is. Every minute is worth it, and the movie and its director are now at the pinnacle of “great Nollywood movies and the industry as a whole”, with the likes of Kunle Afolayan, Jadesola Osiberu, and Femi Odugbemi.
THE BAD
There was only one thing wrong with the movie that I could see (and if you have read all my other reviews, that is saying a whole lot).
“What did The King want?” That’s the one thing that I am still asking myself up till now. She wanted something from the politicians, the Jagaban and the movers and shakers of the economy, but maybe that part didn’t make the final cut. Even though it may not really have mattered in the end, it would have still been good to know why Sola Sobowale’s character felt betrayed and was gearing up for revenge, and why they wanted her out of the picture. It was a key thing they missed in the movie.
THE UGLY
In four scenes in the movie, the sound was quite low so people couldn’t really hear what the character said at that point. Four lines, four maybe/maybe not important lines (especially when thinking about it, I didn’t miss out on the overall story because of those four lines).
To conclude this review, I will say a line from the movie,
“The Locust has never been ashamed in his life, until he went to Okesuwa (I hope I got the name correctly) rock where they called it a Tick”.
If King of Boys doesn’t gross the worthy figure at the box office that it actually deserves, then I’m sure Kemi Adetiba will be as ashamed as the Locust because of the effort she put in the movie. You will know that she really enjoys making good movies and not like a lot of other directors who just join a series of skits together and call it a comedy or a rom-com movie.
SCORE – 9/10
King of Boys is showing nationwide (I highly, highly recommend you watch it.)