[blockquote align=”centre” author=”EfikoScore: 4.8/10″ style=”font-size: 30px”] The Play Network remake of a decades-old favourite fails to hit any of its old predecessor’s high points. [/blockquote]
In 1994, the first Glamour Girls film was released. It was the first Nollywood film in English and was a significant driver of social discourse at the time. Looking past the obvious technical inadequacies peculiar to Nollywood movies of that era, Kenneth Nnebue’s drama was a fresh assessment of the Nigerian escort/prostitution industry. It was innovative, provocative, and significant; serving as a progenitor for many other Nollywood films that tried to examine the same theme.
Unfortunately, Play Network’s 2022 remake of the movie fails to hit any of its predecessor’s high points, adding to the studio’s growing list of forgettable remakes of Nollywood classics.
Directed by Bunmi Ajekaiye (Who Lived at Number 6, Selina), Glamour Girls follow four women’s journey through the convoluted escort business. The plot follows Emma (Sharon Ooja), a former stripper who lost her stripping job and now seeks a more lucrative hustle. She turns to Donna (Nse Ikpe-Etim), who operates a high-end escort ring that enjoys the patronage of some of the wealthiest men in the country. Donna is hesitant at first, but eventually acquiesces and hooks Emma up with one of her clients. Emma climbs the social ladder fast and all seem to be going well until she and her colleagues get into trouble after an accountant goes missing, along with an insane amount of money. Billionaire client of Donna, Chief Nkem (Ejike Asiegbu)—to whom the money belongs, has given the girls an ultimatum to return the money or face dire repercussions, and the girls have little time to save themselves.
There are not many positives about this film, which seems to replace the dramatic realism of the original film with the shallow luxury of neo-Nollywood pictures. The main characters make a mess of the acting, and when compared with the original, the generational gap in quality is glaring. While Nollywood has seen a lot of improvement in the technical aspects of filmmaking, the acting has been on a determined descent since the first-generation actors faded out of our screens. Sharon Ooja struggles, Toke Makinwa can’t fake a genuine cry, and Ikpe-Etim once again, plays the classy but morally flawed character she has become too familiarly known for playing. She holds her own weight but has become a typecasted actress who, in this movie, adds nothing new to the dimension of the character she played in Quam’s Money II.
The plot meanders clumsily throughout the two-hour runtime of the movie. While the ‘94 predecessor is a slow-paced drama that unravels delicately, Ajekaiye’s remake is convoluted and unresolved. There are cliche sequences of boat cruises and foreign vacations that are merely superimposed for aesthetics, doing nothing to progress the plot. There are important scenes that end abruptly before the viewer can make any sense of how it ties into the conflict. There are gaping plot holes and the denouement is as implausible and outrageous. The audience is begged to believe that a group of 3 women casually stole a flash drive holding more money than the net worth of the five richest people in the country.
Ajekaiye doesn’t bring any fresh perspective to Glamour Girls. The sequences from the studio’s previous films are uncreatively rehashed. The characters and overall plot progression mirror a general pattern neo-Nollywood is fast adapting to; poor youth gets rich and goes on a boat cruise and overseas trip. (Don’t forget to create a subplot for the hacker character.)
The film also suffers from obvious technical issues. The sound editing is horrible, forcing the audience to adjust the volumes of their devices every time the movie’s audio segues from a dialogue to a soundtrack.
While Kenneth Nnebue’s 1994 classic isn’t a cinematic masterpiece, it had enough dramatic substance to inspire nostalgia. The Play Network-funded remake is a forgettable attempt at recreating one of Nollywood’s most important features.
