Is it still on

Growing up in Nigeria my perception of what I wanted to be when I grew up changed all the time. How I ended up doing what I do is a story I am fed up of telling. It started out with me wanting to be a lawyer, shout out to Ally Macbeal for inspiring me and shout out to social studies for killing that dream.

If social studies could barely hold my attention, how would all the lawyer type subjects. Then there was my engineering phase, now I am starting to think I wanted to be an engineer because well there was lack of creativity in possible occupations in Nigerian secondary schools. It was rare if non-existent to hear someone say I would like to be an insurance broker. Everyone was either a lawyer, doctor or an engineer or when rogue and said Business Man or Woman.

Somewhere along the line when my interests started to set in, I decided my dream career was to be a movie critic. I was and still am to a large extent a movie junkie. I thoroughly enjoy a good movie and in my hay day would have seen 8 of the top 10 movies in the country. Now not so much…  Back then I loved all movies and I did not show prejudice to origins, Hollywood, Bollywood, Gollywood and Nollywood where all game.

But despite my best attempts not to show prejudice it didn’t last long, you see the Nollywood movies would just not end. Now I am not attacking the storylines, some were actually good but why do I need to watch part 1 – 4 just to get the entire story. Like come on why so long. But it wasn’t just that it didn't end, it got worse. Some movies are justified to have to be that long (SOME!!!!) but why must 20 minutes of the start of part two be the last 20 minutes of part one, why must 20 minutes of the start of part three be the last 20 minutes of part 2 and so on. Come on!!!

It gets worse, why must the first 15 minutes of each part be adverts of other movies and why must the man speaking in the adverts be screaming. I can hear just fine I don’t need you to scream. And why do I need to watch 15 minutes of a club scene or swimming pool scene 20 seconds of that and I get the picture, I do not need anything longer.

With all this and so much more, you can understand why I finally gave up on Nollywood it was simply breaking my heart. That was until someone tempted me. So I went to get my hair done, braids and you all know how long it takes to get it done (well at least the women do). My hair stylist was prepared, she had picked a movie (Nollywood of course) to entertain us. The next 6 hours went in a blur between the movie and gossiping talking I did not notice much time I gone by.

As I decided seen as I really enjoyed my Nollywood experience I should give it a try again.  I am going to start with the good points, it was a good story line very entertaining, there was no more the end of one part is the first 20 minutes of the other and general all round production had improved.

Now to the bad, first it is no longer called part 1, part 2 etc. but season 1, season 2 etc. (how does this make sense). Second an additional season has been added so it went up to 5, third must the bad guy always die at the end, how about a shock ending and the bad person escapes and lives a fulfilled life, fourth I really do not need to see 20 minutes of dancing, fifth I think I should just stop here I will just go on and on..

My final verdict, Nollywood movies although very entertaining are just too damn long, it took an entire braiding session to complete one movie. That is 6 hours!!! 6 hours to watch one movie na series!!!