In the wee hours of today, the much publicized and awaited Kunle Afolayan movie, Citation, premiered on Netflix and Kemi Filani has watched it to give you some heads up on if it is worth your precious time or not!
‘Citation’ revolves around Moremi, a young postgraduate student (Temi Otedola) who experiences sexual harassment from a lecturer (Jimmy Jean Louis). It was shot in Nigeria, Senegal, and Cape Verde.
The Citation stars Temi Otedola in her breakout role as Moremi alongside Jimmy Jean Louis, Joke Silva, Adjetey Anang, Gabriel Afolayan and Ini Edo.
Coming from Kunle Afolayan, we didn’t expect any less from the Citation movie and we weren’t disappointed. Kunle Afolayan truly continues to raise the bar when It comes to African story telling. Impeccable cast, unimpeachable locations and the scintillating sound track…..but it was too long, about 2 hours 30 minutes and dragged at some point.
It also had several irrelevant scenes that could have been kept short or totally cut out, e.g the Seun Kuti performance scene and more. If we were actually watching for fun sake and not for review, we wouldn’t have been that patient to sit through to the end without fast forwarding.
All the characters brought forth their A games as a matter of fact, Temi Otedola and Ibukun Awosika who made their acting debut in the movie, were fantastic. We particularly felt the line where Ibikun Awosika instructed Jimmy Jean Louis to sit down after reading out her accomplishments during one of the hearing sessions, we had goose bumps.
We also enjoyed watching Gabriel Afolayan, his chemistry with Temi Otedola was beautiful to watch. Yoruba movie star, Bukunmi Oluwashina was delightful to watch too. Even though all he did through the movie was whisper into Jimmy jean louis’ ears, it was fun seeing Yomi Fash-lanso again after being away from the movie scene for a while.
The major lesson from the movie is to always speak up, (Soro Soke) against sexual-based crimes.
If you have got a 2 hour, 30 minutes to spare, then you can go ahead to watch, and the good thing is you can fast forward the dragging scenes since it is showing on Netflix and not at the cinema where you have to compulsorily sit through to the end.
