NOLLYWOOD FILM REVIEW By Chinyere Obinna. O

Movie title:  Last Weekend (Who killed Pa Reuben?)

What do you get when you combine several seasoned Nollywood heavyweights who usually sizzle on the screen, with an overambitious script and lackluster direction? You get “Last Weekend (Who Killed Pa Reuben?)” a lukewarm whodunit that doesn't quite know who is supposed to have done what. Pa Reuben is an eighty something year old billionaire with social misfits for children, who can’t quite make up his mind what to do with his fortune once he’s gone. Does he give it to his children who definitely don’t deserve it or does he give it to his wife, when he knows very well that she can’t wait for him to croak so that she can run off with the first boy toy that catches her eyes? His wife Patricia, played with a detached coolness by Genevieve Nnaji is a twenty something hot-to-trot bimbo who is bedding his youngest college coed son right under his nose. And his other kids? 

Meet Abigail, his married daughter, who has something to hide. About two years ago, she had a one night stand with her driver and now she has twin reasons to lie to her clueless husband. Their beautiful twin girls really belong to the driver, who is now getting rich by blackmailing her out of her fortune, which is quickly running out, so who else to turn to when the funds run dry than dear old daddy? Her older  brother Gozie, is a medical doctor who a practitioner of gambling and brings home nothing but mounting debts. Now his debtors are nipping at his heels and seem to turn up in the least expected places. And what about Coco? Coco the one that Papa Reuben hung all his high hopes on. Pa Reuben sent Coco to Harvard University for his education, and he came back from the USA with an MBA alright; a Mind Bending Addiction to the white powder and a penchant for running around the place either trying to sell off his valuables to reluctant store owners to feed his addiction, or coming up with the most creative stories to stall his impatient dealers who are eager to collect on his old man’s wealth. When Pa Reuben turns up dead, the plot thickens as two nimble witted Police detectives and their arrogant police boss try to figure out who killed Pa Reuben. 

Could it be his doctor, who was obviously trying to hasten the old man’s death all along by telling him that he should have died about a month ago even though Pa Reuben shows his resiliency by rejecting the doctor’s pronouncement and stating that he is not ready to die? 

Or was it his kids who are impatient to get their hands on their dad’s fortune? Pa Reuben had died instantly from a sip of coffee laced with a lethal dose of poison coffee prepared by his daughter Abigail and passed along to all his children on its way to Pa Reuben. The last of his children to handle the coffee was his youngest son Basil, who became sidetracked by a semi-nude Patricia, his mother in law, after she lured him into her bedroom, but not before he passed the coffee to the maid, a bodacious nymphet who is not quite as innocent as she would like to have us believe.  

Or did Pa Reuben inadvertently cause his own death by saying too much when he converged his children at his home for a family reunion where he revealed to his trusted lawyer that he may change his mind about leaving all his fortune to his faithful maid and use this family gathering as a barometer to help him decide how to distribute the wealth to his family? 

The film could have been great if it had more focus, however it lacked originality and seemed bent on ripping off a lot of the typical Hollywood screen formula, down to the scene in the bedroom where the terrible deed was done, where the detective bends down to touch the wet coffee spill that killed Pa Reuben, smell it, and then touch it  to the tip of his tongue. He then picks up a handkerchief and picks up the coffee cup. As it the answer to their dilemma lay in the fingerprint on the coffee cup, when he already knew that everybody had touched that coffee pot. 

The film casts great actors next to actors that don’t seem to know what to do with a scene, thrown in with the overreaching actors, who end up looking almost comical in their attempts. When Genevieve Nnaji’s Patricia comes to pick up Ramsey Noah’s Basil at school, he is holding his girlfriend who has no reaction when Patricia takes over his attention. She can hear all the provocative things that Patricia is saying to him, and you can see that she is trying to react, but but her attempts appear wooden and stilted, although you might assume that she is trying to act angry. When Patricia drives off in her car, Basil returns to her and proceeds to try to explain away the situation to her. Her face registers nothing except a few batting of the eyelashes and another attempt to appear angry. Coco fumbles his way from one scene to the other, either whining to store owners to give him things on credit, or groveling in reaction to the ever-present threats from his dealers who are trying to collect from him, or twitching around, trying his best to convince us that he is a down-on-his luck addict. 

The movie could have been one of the Nollywood greats but failed to meet the mark. The actors were a melding of the greats and the novice actors who ended up being dwarfed figuratively on the big screen by the dexterity of the acting greats that were juxtaposed on the screen with them. As far as whodunits go, Last weekend is so..........well, last year. 

Rating 7 out of 10.