The Amstel Malta Box Office winners every year have gone on to star in award-winning films, films that have not only won awards but have also announced their actors to the world as twinkling stars to watch out for.
For Ivie Okujaye, winner of the 2010 edition and fifth and final instalment of the reality show, Alero’s Symphony was her announcement, as she co-starred with Nigerian musician, Chibuzor Orji, popularly known as Faze.
Alero Coker is a brilliant lawyer in the making whose heart yearns for music as opposed to the expectations of everyone around her. Together with her family, she goes on a family vacation with her parents and her sister Onome, to a resort on the outskirts of Lagos.
This is where she meets Love Child, a singer with incredible talent but in deep in poverty. They connect based on their mutual love for music till emotions set in. But the oppositions against Alero’s dreams and their being together would come in the way one too many times.
The story, while being quite predictable, is also fresh and uncommon on Nigerian screens. It is not every day you get a music-themed movie with beautiful music, and this must have required a lot of work.
However, the delivery is slightly shoddy, and probably something that was rushed through. And it shows because Alero’s Symphony boasts of some of the best names of cast and crew.
The story is written by Tunde Babalola, award winning screenwriter and writer of critically acclaimed films The Meeting and October 1. It is directed by ace director, Izu Ojukwu of the ’76 and Across the Niger fame, and has Pat Nebo and Yinka Edward as both art director and cinematographer respectively. AMBO basically employs the best in the business for this.
Ivie Okujaye as Alero makes an impressive debut, but as Love Child, Faze is below par anywhere he isn’t singing. Bimbo Manuel and Caroline King seem the perfect parents and act as such, but Matilda Obaseki as Onome overdoes the attitude and sass.
In truth, I have never seen her act a character that isn’t a brat, and I think the stereotype is astounding. Jibola Dabo appears here as the manager of the resort, Victor Olaotan as the law professor, and Frederick Leonard as Alero’s music buddy.
Given all the big names, Alero’s Symphony has all that it needs to be the reference on how to make a movie, but it isn’t and it is sad. There are many ways to look at it.
One from a point of view of a rushed project, or one whose priorities were overly one-sided, focusing on the music and dance rather than the delivery of its main acts.
It can also be seen from the point of view of Nollywood not having gotten a hang of musicals yet, and this is a strong likelihood if films like Hoodrush and Knocking on Heaven’s Door are anything to go by; fair attempts, but with many loose ends left unknotted.
Some of the acting is too ‘act-y’, it becomes obvious that this isn’t natural, and perhaps because it has a lot of cast, it comes off as too loud in certain places.
The shoddiness notwithstanding, Alero’s Symphony heralded a career that has proceeded to make magic. Seeing Ivie Okujaye in the light of one who can do anything based on her obsession for rap in Alero’s Symphony, she has gone on to take challenging yet diverse roles such as Make A Move, where she starred as a dancer, and Something Wicked where she is cast as a hearing-impaired girl, among many others.
Alero’s Symphony is daring, one thing that many a Nollywood film is not. It leaves its comfort zone of posh Lagos house and lengthy conversation, and attacks its motive head on, going as far as a resort to get it done.
It stages music face-offs, talent show competitions and fishing/deep-water sailing just to achieve its aim. By this, it sets the pace and schools Nollywood to not play safe, and perhaps if a few more months had been added to its production, it would have taught us more.
This comes as no big surprise because AMBO movies have been known to go all out, as was seen in White Waters, Sitanda, The Child and Cindy’s Note.
Alero’s Symphony carries a message of love and acceptance, of following hard after your dreams even when it is inconvenient, and of the unfairness of society on the not-so-wealthy, among many other lessons. While it could be much better, it is a fair attempt.
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This post first appeared on TNS.