Omo Iya Kan

Movie Title : Omo Iya Kan
Starring : Doris Simeon Ademinokan, Funke Akindele, Yinka Quadri,
Femi Adebayo
Directed by : Daniel Ademinokan
Screen writer : Pascal Amanfo
Genre : Drama
NFVCB rating : 18

Well, if you’re a movie enthusiast with a knack for the intermittent unleashing of chaotic fury, pitchy emotional vibes, invective powered missiles launched in rapid succession at the target during verbal battles, the deadly strike from the venom of rivalry, betrayal, invoked by the Twins effect, then you’d most likely opt to be visually fed by “Omo Iya Kan”.

High flying movie star “Seun Adebayo Martins’ (Doris Simeon Ademinokan, Most outstanding actress, Indigenous, AMAA 2008) is certainly living her dreams. Her multitudinous fans love her, while producers clamour to have her take the lead roles in their movies. Her face on the movie posters is a copper bottomed guarantee of rapid sales and of course great returns for their investments. The press, paparazzi delightfully obtain snippets of information about her private dealings.

She’s down with the celebrity fever, basking in the euphoria of fame and fortune with its attendant glitz, glamour, razzmatazz and flamboyant life style. Seun is classy, sassy, but is rather bellicose and recalcitrant to the production team ( same as Omotola Jalade Ekehinde in ‘The Celebrity’), portraying herself as a demi-god with unparalleled acting dexterity. Her bosom friend Bola ( Funke Akindele of the Jenifa fame) sticks on her like a leech, constantly applying the eulogizing formula through unreserved encomiums and fluid ear pleasing appraisals. She’s content to tag along with her celebrity friend and constantly declares “ore mi seun superstar”.

Seun’s set to marry the equally talented movie star Alex Bucknor ( Enitan Olaniyan) and her role in a N 100 Million movie project invested by an American company to be filmed in Nigeria is poised to turbo charge her career on to the International circuit. What more could she ask for?
However, a car crash shatters her dreams and she’s been sentenced for life on a wheel chair. This snag halts the shooting of the multi million naira movie and with his boss threatening hail and brimstone for the resumption of its shooting, Pascal (Saidi Balogun) turns to her twin, Seyi, (also Doris Simeon Ademinokan) who returns from ‘the States’ to mop up the mess. Seyi pulls it off and fully embraces acting much to her twin’s dismay. Spurred on by Bola’s counsel, antipathy for her scene stealing twin, and the fall from grace to grass disease affecting her sensibilities, Seun does the unthinkable…

Doris Simeon Ademinokan plays dual roles as the Twins. She staggers at a point beneath its weighty load. However, the professionalism surge from the swiftly coordinated acting dexterity bails her out. I admired Funke Akindele’s leechy roles in the movie. Her facial expressions, body language, gesticulations, reactory time and fleeting sardonic dispositions scored on points. Small wonder she clinched AMAA’s Best actress 2009. Daniel Ademinokan (Black Friday) is gradually carving a name for himself in the directing sphere and is also known as Da Bishop, courtesy of his Box office TV programme. Oh! he’s Doris Simeon’s husband as well just in case you never knew. He has spiced up the movie with creative shots and effects flavours. Even Tade Ogidan (Dangerous twins) will tell you that directing/producing a movie revolving around twins is not as easy as taking a walk in the park, especially when they have to appear together on screen. (Twins effect have overtime been created through movie- matte photography, popular green screen technique, split screen, motion controlled cameras and rotoscoping) and Daniel did a good job pulling it off.

Omo Iya Kan is refreshingly different from the plethora of movies flung in our faces. However, it did not escape the bites of the flaw bug. For one, the screen writer should have been more creative in the scene where Alex pops the big question to Seun. A Celebrity with class, poise and affluence bringing out a ‘diamond ring’ from his blazer without its case (in the absence of creative concepts which viewers have seen in other flicks) to say the least was a blunder. Even my young teenager friend couldn’t help but laugh as well. I guess he left it in one of his father’s numerous private guest houses!
The fact that we already knew from the dialogue way ahead of time that Seun had a twin sister “mercilessly butchered the surprise/suspense moves and set the movie’s pace to an anti-climax one with the predictability gear set to overdrive”.

The aftermath of the accident wasn’t well projected in one of the hospital scenes. For one her broken leg ought to have been suspended in the usual, realistic, mid air POP style ( taking a good cue from Majid Michael’s accident in the movie ‘Behind a smile’). I saw her initially sleeping peacefully on the bed… and was that a bandage on her wrist ? She awakes later on, sheds a few tears and says “ I have accepted my fate!” gosh! when your world comes crashing down, that’s the last thing you realistically say !. Besides, the emotional bridge which linked the viewers to her was blown up to the high heavens by the shelling of ‘non- heart rending bombs’. The viewers ought to have been emotionally connected to her, felt her pain, the anguish and cries from a helpless being at that point. The screen writer ought to have further leveraged on another well creative poignant scene where Seun would have adopted a sombre mood, experienced flashbacks of her stardomic lifestyle viz a viz her present status and momentarily lapsed in to an emotional tantrum throwing state amidst a backdrop of good sound effects / track. It certainly would have endeared viewers more to the movie.

The co-incidental scene where Seun arrives home with Pascal suddenly having a brain wave in solving the looming re-shooting problem on realizing both were twins falls far from the ingenuity mark. Rotimi’s role ( Femi Adebayo) was more of the silent, subtle, one, two liners role until the second half of the movie. Prior to that time I’d asked myself why and what on earth he was doing in the movie?(of course you get to know why much later in the movie). The non- clarity of his relationship with Seyi, initially kept him in the shadows of others.

I had a bit of problem with the crew who shot the multi million naira movie powered by an American company. It was the same crew at the onset of the movie who expressed their displeasure over her absence at the Lekki shooting, that we see taking up the American project (not that it was wrong), but an American company will not invest N 100 million and we simply see the same set of microscopic crew, cast and equipments (what happened to the cranes, dolly). A good number of extras should have been brought on set, more crew members, two or three more scenes (not restricted to the track and interior scenes we saw which later popped up as the movie trailer). The presence of whites of occidental origin during shooting would have brought it home. The Impressive way Seyi initially took up her twin’s role during the resumed shooting was commendable. Wrong! it was simply ludicrous. No slips, no re-takes, no initial frustrating comments and looks of disapproval on the production team’s faces based on the initial performance from a rookie! It was simply a mere powder puff. In the excitement of producing a good movie the team did not pay attention to a few details. Alex Bucknor in a scene said his father was the Special adviser to the Vice president, on what may i ask ?, besides the ‘Day for night’ shot in one of the confrontational scenes the twins had wasn’t properly executed.

Notwithstanding the flaws, you could tell from the non sound clashes with the dialogue, good sound effects, tracks (Nene – Temidara, 9ice- street credibility) and music score, use of entertainment magazines and celebrity’s comments (the way Kel’s video of ‘too fine’ was shot), over cranking and under cranking techniques (giving us the prison break visual feeling), good subtitling, good picture quality, that Omo Iya kan “was not produced by charlatans in the industry”.

It’s a movie that leaves a deep impression of a good non- uptight movie in your mind, and you can catch a glimpse of the behind the scenes shots during the rolling of the closing credits. Is Omo Iya kan good enough for you to buy or watch ? Yes… and i have this funny feeling it’ll make the AMAA 2010 nominees list and wouldn’t be surprised when it wins.

Points Rating for Omo Iya Kan : 3

Points rating guide
5 points : Classic
4 points : Very good
3 points : Good
2 points : Fair
1 point : An apology