Merry men premiered at Imax Cinema, Lekki, Lagos, on the 28th September to an “Agbada Challenge” which had a lot of celebrities and non-celebrities display their best agbada looks, all in support of AY’s new production.

However, that’s the best part of everything; the Agbada Challenge and the trailer, as the movie fell short of delivering on its promise of a being a blockbuster.

A group of men who differ nothing from cultists or yahoo boys come together to frustrate a few politicians and fuck some. There’s a blogger, a hacker, a gigolo, an industrialist whose industry we know nothing about, a life of the party mister whose occupation we do not know, and a double agent. There are guns, huge guys, a lot of sexy women and alcohol, there’s sex that has one of the characters vibrating like she’s having a seizure and yet another that looks like a worship to a god on the wall, more women and more display of affluence.

There’s nothing thrilling about merry men. It is 90 minutes of painstaking display of wealth. We see a high-budget movie, mostly shot in Abuja, having a lot of promise but not coming through on any.

It’s sad that with such a lineup of stars, the movie managed to fall short of telling a compelling story which is a huge downfall of many Nigerian movies and particularly, AY movies.

From poor sex scenes to watery dialogue and a potentially strong plot which was scripted in the most mediocre of ways, merry men would have drained all of your mental and emotional energy by the time you step out of the cinema.

I feel mildly ashamed to see a number one like RMD and Ramsey Noah in such a bluff. I got out of the cinema and was thinking, what the phuck did I just see?

However, if you have a flair for pretend action movies and effects, you may have the patience to sit through the torture.

Guess what? We hardly ever see the hacker’s screen. Ouch! Spoiler.

Okay so, let me stop being a bad belle at this point and summarize the movie for us lol.

Merry men stars Falz (Folarin Falana), Jim Iyke, Ramsey Nouah, Ireti Doyle, RMD (Richard Mofe Damijo) and a host of other star actors, Merry Men attempts to tell the stories of “Yoruba Demons” through the lives of four bachelors notorious in Abuja for the lux lifestyle, posh cars, studio apartments and the attention of women. In an attempt to uncover a politician’s loot and a plan to evacuate a whole community, their lives experience major turns. All is fair in love and war as they risk everything to save a marginalized people.

In all, the movie would have been an awe inspiring if it was well researched, if it wasn’t rushed, if it didn’t try too hard to be a poor imitation of some Hollywood crime investigation and mafia movie in one.

Merry men is a potential, a promise, a drop of water in the bucket. It is a representation of many of us creatives, that we rush everything, we don’t pay attention to art, that we don’t give it the due diligence it deserves.

There’s a reason your mum advised you against rushing hot moi-moi when you were a child, it’s because it can make you purge.

Let’s do better.

by Farida Adamu