When the trailer of The American King was released last year, we were particularly excited because it was Nse Ikpe Etim’s debut in a Hollywood movie, unfortunately, the one hour, 16 minutes spent seeing ‘The American King’ at the Silverbird cinema in Ikeja, hours ago felt like forever because it was such a mess.
Written and directed by Adah Obekpa, the film titled ‘The American King- As Told by an African Priestess’ revolves around Sebastian an ex-con who gets an unbelievable offer to escape it all, courtesy of a mysterious high Priestess who seeks to fulfill a 400-year-old prophecy: Choose an American who will become King of an ancient African kingdom, and restore it to the global superpower it once was.
In the lead role as Sebastian is music star Akon while Nse plays the African high priestess.
‘The American King- As Told by an African Priestess’ also stars Enyinna Nwigwe, Miguel A. Nunez Jr, Jaimyon Parker, Brad Potts, Kelcey Watson, and Mother Love.
The movie was shot in both Nigeria and the United States.
One of the turn offs of the movie was the badly edited sound, we barely managed to hear the conversations because of the overbearing background music. It made it difficult to follow through and understand the dialogues and plots. We hope that is fixed before more Nigerian viewers visit the cinema for it.
Two, it was supposed to be a comedy but the number of times we (and other viewers) genuinely laughed in the hall wasn’t more than thrice or so.
Three, the storyline wasn’t relatable, it lost us after the African priestess, Akon and the team arrived Africa. Apparently, the producers probably wanted to make a ‘Coming to Africa’ version of ‘Coming to America’ but the only thing they got right was the costumes, every other thing was bleh.
From us at Kemi Filani Movies, it is a 3/10.
