This movie tells the story of a lady; Tade (played by Sharon Ooja) and 2 brothers – Chidi and Cheta (played by Bovi and Pere).
Chidi is Tade’s ex-boyfriend, he is a politician who got involved in a sex scandal (threesome caught on Camera) and the only way to salvage his political career is to get married.
Cheta is Tade’s best friend who also has romantic feelings for her.
Tade’s family is on the verge of bankruptcy and she decides to marry Chidi in order to help them.
The storyline was not great, storytelling was poor.
There were too many issues with this movie but I’ll address a few.
Acting and casting was a major challenge.
Mismatched casting is actually a thing and it really affected this movie. Bovi and Sharon doing romance???????It just did not work. Sharon and Pere nko? It did not work either. You’ll feel the strong urge to wipe your lips with handkerchief after watching them kiss. Why did they force the Yoruba guy to act the role of a Hausa man when they could have casted Ali Nuhu and saved us all the stress of watching the man struggle?? The guy was just giving us orishirishi accents.
Sharon was unable to express one genuine emotion in this movie. I think she is growing as an actress but this movie took her back by several steps, she was unable to come to that point where she was one with her character.
Pere? They just needed his name and his muscles in this film, they did not think it was important to give him a personality, intelligent dialogues or actually involve him in the plot development. He would just randomly appear and disappear. As for Wofai and DSF, I don’t even have words to describe what they did but this was not a good outing for them. They really need to stop casting Teddy A, he cannot act to save himself.
Mr Macaroni gave the best performance in this movie. The fact that he speaks really well is a major plus for him. He played the character Oba, Tade’s rude and overbearing elder brother and he delivered. The attitude, the expressions, everything worked. I like the fact that he is not allowing them box him in, he is not becoming Nollywood’s new clown, he is taking on challenging roles. He got my attention with the movie Ayinla and he did it again with this one. I am really looking forward to seeing him grow in Nollywood.
Let’s talk about the story itself, a sex scandal is not enough to ruin anybody’s political career in this corrupt Nigerian system. Putting out a statement that the opposition party drugged and set him up was enough to sweep the issue away. Seeing that this “non-issue” was supposed to be an actual conflict did not make any sense. Tade was the one that suggested a marriage of convenience but I think they forgot because in subsequent scenes, we saw Tade crying and complaining that her family was making her sacrifice her happiness and I was just thinking what is going on? This was your idea!
So the love triangle between Tade and the brothers ehn, I was not feeling it. No chemistry, no emotions, nothing. There was nothing romantic about this movie, it was not funny either. How then does this movie qualify as a Rom-com?
Another thing that was bad about this movie was the transitioning. I don’t think I have ever seen anything like it. One scene had to literally “roll away”to introduce the next scene. I mean one scene did not seamlessly lead to another, we had to watch each scene roll out. Some scenes were divided into 3 or 4 frames like a photo collage, they divided the movie into segments and introduced each segment with a tittle. It was like watching a PowerPoint presentation in slideshow format.
The audio was terrible. So many times we struggled to hear them and in other scenes they were so loud even their whispers could be heard in adjoining rooms. Funsho Adeola (he was Tade’s father) sounded like he was speaking from another location in most of his scenes.
There was a particular scene, the screen was actually shaking, how did they not cut out that part? We could see their mics attached to their backs, why??? Who was that journalist? I don’t know what personality they wanted to portray but her role made me cringe all through.
Too many unnecessary scenes and unrealistic scenes; for example, the scene where Tade and Chidi sang on a stage in Abeokuta was so awkward. The scene was screaming Hollywood movie copy copy, I cringed!
Then the questions…
Lottie sent a document that cost Tade’s family their Oil Block and there was no repercussion. A whole oil block? How did she know where the document was saved on Oba’s phone? How did she know what to look for? It just did not make any sense.
The wedding set up was really bad, they should not have bothered. They set up only 2 empty food trays and this was supposed to be a union of 2 powerful and wealthy families o!
Everything was bad, the only thing that was of good quality was the edge control they used for Tade’s hair because her edges refused to move. Morning till night, in all circumstances, the edges did not move o, it was quite disturbing.
Perfect arrangement was co-written by Chinaza Onuzo who also directed it. Maybe he should have taken a step back, he was too close to the story so he could not objectively see the underlying issues.
For 110 minutes, perfect arrangement the movie resolutely decided not to live up to its title because there was nothing perfect about it.
As for the audience, we bonded. We were all shocked by the startling lack of depth and originality, we complained together as the scenes flashed through the screen, we mourned the waste of our time and money.
Overall, Perfect arrangement was not a nice watch, bland storyline, wildly mismatched casting, paper thin characterization, painful acting and shoddy production values. I won’t recommend it.
Rating: 2.5/10
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