Queen Lateefah – Movie Review

As soon as I saw the first few scenes of this film, I was like, “Oh my God! Alakada 4.0.?” In fact, after the first few scenes, I was so sure it was going to be a bad watch. I mean: fake life, living in the slum, renting clothes and borrowing cars to fit the image, claiming to be related to a rich person, starring Broda Shaggi. It had all the red flags and I really didn’t want to continue because God knows I am absolutely sick and tired of watching films like this. However, as the film progressed, I was pleasantly surprised.

The story is not new, like I said earlier. People pretending to be what they’re not is a very common and tired Nollywood trope, but this film does something different: it acknowledges that the internet exists where people can research and verify stuff. So at least when you lie, you don’t sound dumb, and with that alone, it levels up.

What did I like? 

I must confess that I cringed a lot while watching this film. Lateefah’s audacity made me close my eyes a few times because I was shy on her behalf, but I liked the character Lateefah. I liked how they built the character because they wanted us to believe certain things about this Lateefah, they wanted us to believe that she is very confident, audacious, smart, kind, she does her research, and she loves her mother. I believed them. I believed them because they gave us several instances to validate all these things. 

So So acting and casting worked to a large extent. I liked the performances from Kunle Remi, Madam Saje, Gbugbemi Ejeye, to mention a few. I didn’t get why Femi Adebayo and Lateef Adedimeji were in the film, but using Lateefah’s own words, “I don’t begrudge her effort”, she had to do what she needed to do to push her movie and they were not so annoying or in our faces, that helped. Special accolades to Wumi Toriola, who played the character Queen Lateefah; I thought she her performance was very good. She speaks really well; she delivered her lines convincingly too.

Let’s talk about the dialogues. I think I had a love-hate relationship with the lines. At first, I felt like Lateefah’s lines were too serious, the grammar more than what you would hear in the middle of casual conversation. But as the film progressed, I just could not but respect the effort. Most Nollywood films don’t even try with the dialogues anymore, but in this film, they had actual lines, not just freestyle lines, not just slangs and senseless chatter, but real words that showed wit, intent, and intelligence. And most importantly, it was consistent with the backstory for the character. What do I mean? They already told us that Lateefah was from a poor background, but she read a lot of books growing up and built her vocabulary through that, and not necessarily from speaking it with others. One thing that does is: you know plenty big grammar that you just sprinkle in casual conversations that might throw other people off. The scene where Lateefah told Arese to consider herself lucky to witness Jide make an exception to his rule for her was the first time I actually started liking her in the film, and you could see Jide pause to look at her differently at that same moment! How you know the dialogues were good? So many lines stayed with me!

And this brings me to the next thing I liked about the film. I liked how they handled the Marketing pitch preparation, which was a major plot point. Typical Nollywood movies would just say, “we are working on developing a campaign,” and at the retreat, they’ll gather around the table pretending to brainstorm without actually saying a word or doing anything. But seeing Lateefah actually speak on two campaign ideas in this movie impressed me like mad. The way she talked about them and, most importantly, because the ideas actually sounded brilliant. Whoever wrote those lines deserves a round of applause. They obviously researched and included viable campaign ideas. I honestly can see Lagos implementing those ideas and they would be a hit. The way this part of the film impressed me just told me I’m not asking for too much, because really, telling a film to back up the major plot point it has included in its story with actual effortis the bare minimum. We are asking for films that at least take cognizance of the fact that they have an intelligent audience that would notice the effort.

Moving on, I liked most of the relationships in this film. I liked her relationship with her mother. Surprisingly, I liked her relationship with Bolaji too. At first I was not a fan, but that scene where Bolaji tried to cheer her up after her lies were exposed was really good. So many emotions: it was sad, then it became sweet as she cheered her up, hailing her like any sister would. I thought the scene was very wholesome.

I liked how they handled Lateefah’s relationship with Jide’s sister; it’s not the typical approach.

Another thing I appreciated was that they tried to close open loops. You know, random scenes or characters that most movies would just forget: the upcoming musician, he was not forgotten; he actually shot his music video. Jide had mentioned putting her on a billboard, and he actually did. If I had seen a few more billboards with sample execution of their “My Lagos story” campaign idea with regular people sharing their Lagos story, I would actually have screamed. But nevertheless, I appreciated the effort and thought.

But… 

Lateefah actually had a business, and that was how she could afford her fake lifestyle, but I would have liked to see more of it, and not just scenes where she is dropping off random bags with random people. She was into selling luxury lifestyle items and she was obviously good at it, that comes with better exposure and I dare say some traveling. I would have liked to see more.

I had questions while watching, such as the Osun state contract they got: what did she do? She could not have done much because she did not have the connection, but she would have tried somehow. Jide would probably have gotten the contract by himself, but I would have liked it if they did not gloss over it. Something must have happened to make Jide feel she had a hand in it somehow, showing us that would have increased the tension and fueled the suspense.

How did Arese find Broda Shaggi?

I think anyone would say Lateefah & Jide’s relationship could have used a little more fleshing out. It felt rushed and towards the end, even more so. I was not sure what they were, even though he kissed her. Generally, they had a nice connection, but the romance did not really shine through. Let me confess and say I was dreading the moment they would kiss (some Nollywood kiss scenes have legit traumatized me in the past) because at the beginning they seemed like such an unlikely couple. However, they looked good together (the scene where they both wore white for the memorial—they looked so good like an actual couple!) and the times they did kiss, it did not look bad at all. They did not try to do too much: it was not sloppy, it was light and looked tender, and that was all we needed.

In the same vein, I would like to say, even though the romance was not really there, I did not hate it at all because this film was character-driven; it was not driven by romance. It takes a solid character to be able to do that. Our focus was on Lateefah, and honestly, if they did not end up together and she just went ahead to build her business and reinvent herself, I would have been fine with it.

Overall, Queen Lateefah is that film that I did not expect to like when I started watching it, that I actually ended up liking. Even though the story is not new and is not what many would consider special or compelling, this film was helped by solid performances, meaningful dialogues, a strong character, and decent production values.

This is an impressive outing for Wumi Toriola since it’s her first first cinema movie as a producer/lead actress and I am looking forward to seeing more from her.

My Rating: 6/10

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Read the review of Farmer’s Bride

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