Watching Tade Ogidan's ''Family On Fire'' on Easter Monday



MAMA (LANRE HASSAN)




CURTAIN CALL AT THE LONDON PREMIERE IN OCT, 2011




TADE WITH SSP, FILM MAKER, KINGSLEY OGORO,
MUSICIAN & UNILAG DON, TUNLI SOTIMINRIN & KSB




TADE WITH MIC) RAMSEY NOEAH,
SIMI OPEOLU, KUNLE AFOLAYAN & FOSUDO



Yesterday, (Easter Monday, April 9, 2012) I was at the premiere of my friend, Tade Ogidan's Lagos World Premiere (whatever that means) of his latest filmic experience. He calls it ''Family on Fire''. Oh my, you have never seen a family combust like this!!

Today is not for a review of the event's organisation and pre-screening activities...and there’s so much to chastise and admonish in that area...and of course, there are great attempts that deserve praise and encouragement.

But my attention is on the ''preachment'' of the film. A message that sits snugly in my heart. The producers and promoters of the film (which includes the hyper-acting harridan, Sola Sobowale, who was the night's Sergeant Major dressed in what Tade described as her 'kitchen attire') want us to review how we treat our children. The values we share with them; the quality of love and attention we give them in their formative years....and even as they grow and mature.

Let me risk a rapid summary: Three brothers, Femi (Sola Fosudo), Wale (a good new face, Yinka Olusanya) and Kunle (Saheed Balogun) live in London. Kunle, a swashbuckling man-about-town suggests that their mum (effervescent Lanre Hassan) be flown in from Nigeria to enjoy the rest her wintering life in UK. The other brothers are stunned at Kunle’s good thinking, but the chap’s motive is sinister: he wants to use his mum as a noncommissioned drug courier.

By a mix-stroke of fortune and smooth-talk, Kunle convinces star passenger, Kenny St. Brown, the gospel pop act who plays herself, to escort his mum with the undisclosed contraband! One of the most suspenseful is watching KSB and the old woman being “trolleyed” into an investigation room by a suspicious British immigration official.

You are alternately thrilled and impassioned when the unsuspectingly cantankerous KSB almost thrusts the poor old woman into life imprisonment, before a fire alarm prompts some sort of escape. To jump ahead: we find out later that Kunle’s boss, a notorious baron, half-Portuguese, half-Guyanese of some sorts, eerily portrayed by Segun Arinze (undisputable Bad-man top-gun of Nigerian movies) is actually the mastermind of the fire-alarm ruse.

In any case, Mum gets to Femi’s home safely and Kunle is stuck in Lagos as a result of the famed volcanic eruption dust that makes flying across the Mediterranean impossible. Contraband is exposed amidst staggering amazement. The family’s fire has been stoked.

Spurning good counsel to get rid of the cocaine along with its owner, Kunle, and resume their normal life, the enraged Femi elects to punish Kunle by seizing the hot stuff! He hides the drugs, but he does not escape the prying eyes of a young relative Femi has brought to London to study, Moyo (Felix Ologbosere, a natty new face Tade has, as usual, extracted for glory)….

As they say in Idumota/Onitsha filmesque: Watch out for Part 2