The code 101 of enjoying Nollywood movies is; never to have expectations. At least for me, it’s why I don’t leave the cinema angry every time I watch movies.
Now, let’s talk about AY’s latest movie, The Standup.
The standup is the story of a young man, Ovie, who naturally makes people laugh. However, life becomes cruel to him when he loses his dad, and his dad’s business partner comes to the burial to claim that his dad owes him 2M naira.
The business partner then takes his sister, threatening to get married to her if he doesn’t refund the money in 12 weeks. To rescue his sister, Ovie travels to Lagos searching for a job and gets involved with all kinds of people.
He finally gets a decent job as an electrician, and one day while he is cracking his Joke, Chris sees the talent in Ovie and decides to take him up to perform as a standup comedian. Sadly, Ovie gets on stage on several occasions and cannot say anything. Things become tougher when he loses his job, can’t get any standup comedy gig, and his sister is about to marry an older man over a debt.
How, then, does Ovie wriggle himself out of this situation?
I really want to understand why the storyline had to be dragged on for so long. It is bad enough that the jokes weren’t funny. It was annoying that we had to sit for 2 hours listening to boring jokes for about an hour. The story would have been even way better without trying to force in comedy.
There’s no point in going in-depth in the analysis of the storyline of The StandUp. Let’s just manage what we have.
The directing could have been better. So many scenes seemed too mechanical. I’m sure the actors wouldn’t have believed themselves. One good example is the scene where there was a gunshot during the movie’s comedy show. The actors in that scene ran as if they were expecting the gunshot.
As for the acting, RMD owes us all an apology for being in that movie because one would think being a legend, he will be highly selective as regards the kind of movies he will feature in.
Not to say he didn’t do well in the Stand-up, but he has no business in that movie. If Ovie is just a comedian in real life, I’d understand why his acting was basic. There was little energy, and it felt like he was just doing his thing and not necessarily acting.
I didn’t see an effort. We all agree that AY is a poor actor, so there’s no point in dragging it. I must say, though that he’s getting better. Mofe Duncan is a fair actor, and he didn’t do badly at all for the Standup. The acting was average, and although not fantastic, it was good enough to keep us till the end of the movie.
For ratings, the standup would be getting a 4/10
