The first episode of the new Kemi Adetiba project, To Kill A Monkey, opens at a shrine, as a half-naked man conducts what appears to be an initiation ceremony for a group of boys. It’s a nighttime scene and the boys cower on their knees, even before their backs are pierced and drops of their blood collected in a wooden vessel.
One by one, the boys swear with their “life, blood, and flesh” to be loyal to a boss who then steps into the outdoor shrine in fashionable boots and oversized mask. He lifts his mask without revealing his face to the camera, takes a drink from the vessel, and shouts to the skies. Is this shout necessary, an attentive viewer might ask. The answer is no. Why is anyone shouting at an event obviously requiring secrecy? But this is the kind of stuff that filmmakers not thinking clearly about the universe they’ve created end up doing.
That attentive viewer might also get the sense that this first scene should serve up a bit of horror, after all these are kids being bled for occultic purposes, but a few things prevent the scene from living up to its potential. First, the cowering boys are not great at cowering, then the scene goes on for too long, and, finally, what exactly is that garish soundtrack doing in a scene better served with silence?
Misjudgements of this kind are fairly typical of mainstream Nollywood projects. But it’s especially tragic here because this is the opening scene for a project heralding the return of Adetiba, the director behind The Wedding Party and King of Boys, the two most influential Nollywood films of the past decade. The former led to a slew of colourful comedies; the latter was the first of several projects, including Shanty Town, Gangs of Lagos, and Red Circle, set around the dark underbelly of Nigerian life and politics.
Pilot episode of Kemi Adetiba’s over-soundtracked To Kill A Monkey is bloated but saved by Bucci Franklin’s charisma.
Efiko Score: 4.5/10
The new project is neither comedy nor political thriller, and, going by the pilot, isn’t as good as any of those films. We’ll have to see about To Kill A Monkey’s effect on Adetiba’s Nollywood colleagues.
In any case, from the shrine, we move to the city proper. Enter Efemini, played by man-of-moment William Benson, a downtrodden handyman at a restaurant stealing wifi to learn programming, while lamenting his lot. A separate storyline involves Mo Ogunlesi (Bimbo Akintola), a rather zealous, newly promoted officer at the Nigeria Cybercrime Commission. Both characters suffer personal losses within minutes of appearing in the pilot. They also almost meet at one point. But it is quite obvious that a meaningful meeting is certain to happen between them at some point in To Kill A Monkey’s 8 episodes. Efe’s life is in focus, however, in the pilot. We are meant to ask whether his circumstances might change.
Adetiba answers that question in the last sequence of the pilot, which turns out to be the best sequence in the episode’s bloated 57-minute runtime. The reason the sequence works as well as it does come down to the actor Bucci Franklin, who plays Oboz, a man Efe knew back in the day as a student cultist.
Franklin steals the scene and hijacks the episode as Oboz displays the brash generosity of a former undergrad cultist in the process of bestowing a favour as an adult. His character is based on a well-known stereotype but Franklin makes a living breathing person out of the type. His pidgin is fluent, his gestures are rugged, his eyes are brimful of violence. In Bucci Franklin’s consummate hands, a Nigerian stereotype could become a Nollywood archetype.
As the pilot ends, it becomes clear that most of To Kill A Monkey will take place through the lives and actions of Efe, Oboz, and Mo, the relationship between the first two being the most promising.
There are other characters, including Madam Adunni, who runs the restaurant Efe works at and is the pilot’s other memorably shifty character. The role is played excellently by Constance Owoyomi, who should see her stock go up after this portrayal. There’s also Nosa, Efe’s wife (Stella Damasus).
While Franklin and Owoyomi hold their end of the agreement between cast and audience, Adetiba’s work here is barely average. Her screenplay is replete with clichés both at the level of dialogue and plotting. Early on, Efe says he was “born to poor and determined parents who insisted that their status in life would not affect [his] education” as though this isn’t a line everybody has heard before. And, of course, he is robbed on the same day he receives some cash. Poor dialogue meets and marries poor plotting.
Indeed, the problems of that opening scene—less than stellar acting, overlong scenes, and dodgy sound design—bedevil the bulk of the pilot episode. There’s a hackneyed phrase every five lines and no scene is allowed to end without a super-intrusive score.
And yet, the major flaw is a bloated runtime comprising overlong scenes. That was also the main flaw of the King of Boys series, a project that almost taints the legacy of the original film. Today, the KOB series is ignored in Adetiba’s body of work discussions.
By the end of the final episode, we’ll know if To Kill A Monkey can avoid that unsavoury fate.
