You see comedians like Mr Macaroni, Bovi and Wofai Fada in a movie, you tell yourself you are in for a good laugh. But, sadly, the Nollywood movie; The Perfect Arrangement is nothing close to funny. What do I mean by this?
The Perfect Arrangement is the story of a lady Tade (Sharon Ooja), whose family is about to go bankrupt and needs good PR to stay back afloat. On the other hand, another family has two sons, Chidi (Bovi) and Cheta (Pere). Cheeta is Tade’s best friend, and although they have feelings for each other, they never explored their feelings. But, somehow, Tade fell in love with Chidi. They had a beautiful relationship until Chidi came home one day, saying he couldn’t marry Tade because of his political ambition to become governor.
They broke up, and Tade focused on her fashion design business, this time beginning to explore her feelings for Cheta. Chidi’s political ambition seemed to be crumbling along the line as he was filmed having a 3some which was a big scandal for his gubernatorial ambition. On the other hand, all seemed to be smooth with Tade until she discovered her family was going broke, and she needed to salvage the situation. So she decided to get into an arranged marriage with Chidi, who she didn’t love again, just so his scandal didn’t get in the way of his winning the election and that way, her family could be wealthy again.
Did the marriage pull through, despite not being in love with Chidi? Did her family actually scale through the trying times? How did she manage her emotion with Cheta? All of these questions can only be answered when you watch the movie.
Let’s start with the script; I want to believe the writer had a perfect mental picture of what she was trying to create or the message she was trying to pass across, but unfortunately, couldn’t project that imagination well. The storyline of The Perfect Arrangement lacked depth and proper plot structure. As a matter of fact, the writer left us confused at some point. Not just that, the character development in The Perfect Arrangement is zero, and it makes one wonder if the writer actually put in-depth thinking into the writing of the script. As if these disasters aren’t enough, there are also conflicts in the dialogue, making the film even more confusing. For instance, Chidi told Tade he was breaking up because he needed to marry someone with a political background who could connect with the grassroots, and Tade wasn’t that person. Later in the movie, we realize Tade actually comes from a political background. In all, the scripting of The Perfect Arrangement was a disaster.
At some point, I was asking if the problem of The Perfect Arrangement was with the writer or the director because something was fundamentally wrong with the directing of the movie. I would have said the director couldn’t do much because of how badly the script was written but seeing that the director was one of the writers, it was a directorial problem. There were so many unnecessary and unbelievable scenes in the movie; like How can they be having a family meeting and Cheta isn’t sitting with them? How is Bovi just knowing about his position as a commissioner just a week before his swearing-in? The truth is, the director didn’t do justice to the script.
The acting in The Perfect Arrangement was just fair, and there could have been better actors for certain characters. For instance, Bovi isn’t the perfect person for that role, and he should probably just stick to comedy. On the other hand, Sharon Ooja is improving as an actress, and it is good to see it. Pere of Big Brother didn’t do badly himself. Wofai Fada did fairly and made us laugh once in a while. Funsho Adeolu, Mr Macaroni and Mimi Cha Cha didn’t do badly at all, and it is safe to say they are good actors. Rotimi Salami is a good actor, no doubt, but he didn’t kill the role in The Perfect Arrangement.
The music choice was great and kept the audience smiling at least. The costume could be better ‘because the outfits in some scenes are disturbing. Let’s not even get into that.
For ratings, The Perfect Arrangement will get a 3/10