A half hearted attempt at the salacious…..
Synopsis: This movie tells the story of Abel (played by Timini Egbuson) a tech bro and Bianca (Played by Efe Irele) who is a stripper at night on a site called Fans Only, and a teacher during the day. Abel is a shy nerd who is very awkward around women, and as a result, he is addicted to the Fans Only site, where he pays to watch strippers touch themselves while he jerks off. He is one of Bianca’s regular customers. Fortunately or unfortunately, he meets Bianca in real life (turns out they live in the same building but he does not recognize her because she wears masks while interacting with her customers on the sex site), they become friends and he falls for her. He later finds out that she is the stripper he watches on the sex site and that she has a boyfriend but he decides to fight for their love and get her back.
This movie ehn…
First, what did I like? I liked the movie soundtrack, really nice songs. I acknowledge and appreciate the fact that they were trying to do something different with this movie. Picture quality was great, they used some animations that I really liked, I liked the lighting & setting. Props and costumes were really nice too.
There was just one sex scene in this movie and it was nicely done.
Acting and casting was not bad.
One thing I must mention is that I think this movie tried to incorporate a character with autism (a child named Emmanuel), this was really good but they did not do much with the character. This movie lost a good opportunity to create awareness about autism. We saw Emmanuel throw tantrums, we saw him make angry sounds to control his emotions, but it would have been nice for them to use the actual words (autism, stimming) and not just gloss over it.
Now, what were the issues with this movie?
The storyline was not bad but they were too focused on creating the “sexy vibe” at the expense of developing the story properly.
Character development was not great, so we did not really understand the motivation behind the actions of the characters. For example, Bianca is kind and generous, she is a teacher and she loves kids, her boyfriend is very rich…so why exactly was she stripping for money? Why exactly was she rolling half naked for strange men online? If she was not making enough from teaching, why did she not get another job or a proper side hustle? She did not look like she was struggling so should we assume she was doing it for fun?
They gave us characters that we could not like and as such, we could not cheer for them. Let’s talk about the 3 main characters for example…
1. Abel was a simp. A finished man who was addicted to masturbation and speaking to strange women on adult sites. He knew this was a girl who liked to call strange men daddy online for a fee, he was still the one begging her.😭😭
- Abel donated all his money to the orphanage where Bianca worked in order to impress her and did not have money to invest in his own business initiative.
- Even after she callously told him to leave her house while she was wrapped in the arms of her boyfriend, even after he realized she literally slept with him while she was still in a situationship, he still begged her to take him back.
- Habib (Bianca’s Boyfriend – played by Seyi Awolowo) on the other hand was very rude and dismissive to Bianca, so I did not even feel bad for him that she was seeing someone else on the side. He would make snide comments about her outfits and laugh it off. But even Habib was weird, he found out his girlfriend was stripping for different men online for money but instead of getting angry, he rewarded her with 2million to donate to the orphanage. Habib knew she had a thing with another man, he knew she did not love him but still, he asked her to marry him.
- As for Bianca, how can we like a lead that was just selling her body for no reason? She knew she had an unresolved situationship with Habib but she was sharing strawberry with Abel and lying down on his thighs and licking his finger. Not once did she apologize or show remorse about her strange choice of side hustle. She fought with Abel for paying to watch her on the sex site and with tears in her eyes she was saying “I thought you were the one for me, I thought what we had was real,” meanwhile she was the stripper with a man on the side o! How can someone be so manipulative?????
- When Kasala burst and her video went viral online, people started calling her out saying a stripper should not be allowed to teach children. She tried to manipulate the headmistress of the orphanage by saying she started stripping in order to raise money for the center but that was a big lie, she was stripping way before the school had financial issues.
How exactly are we supposed to like these characters and be invested in their love story??? How is this even a romantic story? There was nothing sweet, tender, funny or touching about this supposed romantic-comedy. Even though they tried to infuse all the typical romance cliches, this movie was just too toxic to be considered cute on any level.
Moving on, they tried to make use of tech terms since Abel was supposed to be a tech bro but I think they forgot that they introduced Abel to us as a graphic designer and not a software engineer. Graphic designers don’t develop software, they don’t tweak apps backend, they don’t adjust codes, so why exactly was Abel speaking like he was a software developer? He is not a product or project manager, why was he the one presenting the product demo to company stakeholders and explaining the product functionalities? If a software product is only available on iOS, you cannot just tap a button in a meeting to make it available on Android, it does not work that way!!! Why did this movie even suggest that?
If we must use some job titles in a movie, the least movie makers can do is to take a little time to research what the role entails and use the correct language. They should try na, these tiny details matter.
There was the unnecessary rape twist. Why did they even include it when they knew they were not going to resolve it properly? How did Lanre (Abel’s friend) gain access to Bianca’s house? Did she not lock her door? How did he know she was the popular stripper known as Caramel? (She wore masks for all her sessions, so there was no way he could have known) I just did not get that part.
This movie promised us steam, they said it would be bold and audacious but the big question is “was it really?” I’ll access it from 2 angles.
On one hand, a conservative person might find the movie distasteful and embarrassing because it seemed like a long porn video starring a girl wearing sexy tiny costumes and a perpetually horny male adult.
On the other hand, a street baddie would say, this movie is a half-hearted attempt at being salacious. They did not really follow through with the heat as promised. Nothing really scandalous happened here. What exactly did they show us? We saw Bianca dance with her short skirts a few times and in another scene, we saw her crawl on the floor like a cat, fully kitted in her bunny costume.
We saw Abel put his hand inside his shorts a few times while mimicking moaning sounds but it was more uncomfortable to watch than erotic because it seemed like he was scratching something in his lower region.
There was just one sex scene and even in that scene, they were shrouded in darkness.
How can they call someone a stripper on a site called Fans Only, where people pay to watch her strip and everytime she was supposed to strip, they hurriedly changed the scene. I believe they could have found ways to creatively shoot maybe a side view of her actually stripping or something because what is worth doing at all is worth doing well, you either go big or go home!!
So this movie is not bad or audacious enough to be considered good by a “baddie” and it is too vulgar to appeal to a conservative person.
The end was extremely cliche and I hated it so much. Let me paint a picture.
They are at the wedding venue, Bianca is ready to marry Habib and suddenly, Abel enters the event venue and screams her name, she runs out to meet him, they start kissing and suddenly, it starts raining, what is that??? It was like watching an Indian movie without the accompanying soundtrack.😩
The scene made me cringe ehn but I guess it was a befitting end for an extremely misguided romance movie.
Overall, the best I can say is that the movie ‘Hey You’ was not bad. Good production, okay acting but a very flawed storyline.
Rating: 4/10
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