***This review contains spoilers for Netflix's Lisabi: The Uprising
At the risk of making a misguided analogy, perhaps there’s something poetic in watching Lisabi: The Uprising on the same day as watching Manchester City’s Premier League game away to Newcastle. Both reek of a formulaic and mechanical set – that some see as overused and not-so-entertaining – failing to function. The tried and trusted machine – be it Jack Grealish progressively carrying the ball to the edge of an opposition box before finding a Number 8 or a Nollywood-Netflix shtick of a Yoruba warlock or a mythical character – isn’t exactly everyone’s cup of tea, but in this case, the ingredients barely fit, and it all seemed to work for no one.
Directed by Niyi Akinmolayan, Lisabi features Lateef Adedimeji, Ibrahim Chatta, Odunlade Adekola, Oyebade Adebimpe Adedimeji, and Debo Adedayo (AKA Mr Macaroni). The likes of Ibrahim Yekini, Kevin Ikeduba, Gabriel Afolayan, and Femi Adebayo also feature, alongside appearances from Titi Kuti, Muyiwa Ademola, Efe Irele, and Roseline Afije (AKA Liquorose).
Right off the bat, Lisabi doesn’t warm itself to the screen (again, a bit like Man City against Newcastle). There’s the fact that this movie opens with establishing the might of the Alaafin (Odunlade Adekola) of Oyo, but in the most cinematically inconsistent manner. We’re introduced to the ruler by watching him, hardly hearing him speak, but hearing what other characters and the tone of the movie itself says about him. A sort of power is seemingly displayed and established via actions, and less words, and then the movie immediately undoes this by making the seemingly all-powerful ruler get into a nigh-on screaming match with someone the movie establishes as beneath him. Then that is followed up with another more-action-no-words move, almost a kind of compensation.
Then there’s the fact that this movie spends that much time establishing the existence and position of a character that will appear in only two more scenes of the entire film. Suddenly that earlier scene isn’t just poorly-executed, it becomes empty, vapid, and rather pointless. Then the following scenes pretty much relegate the character to nothing. If this is a movie about an uprising, isn’t that the head of the entity the uprising is against?
Lisabi has a runtime of 107 minutes, and if ever a movie needed longer to establish what message it was trying to say, this one falls under that category. A lot of this film spends time depicting the agents of Imperial Oyo as ontologically and cartoonishly evil, so much so that it takes away time for anything else. How does Lisabi (the main character, who, note, has barely been mentioned here) become someone who has a relationship with mystical forces after the movie spends time establishing him as an honest farmer? Did he always have that? Did he get that along the way in the movie? When?
What’s the point of the potential sub-plot of Lisabi’s relationship with Ikeola if it was introduced in his first few scenes, and then dropped afterwards? Do we really care about watching Osokenu die when the movie fails to meaningfully develop his relationship with Lisabi? What more do we know besides Lisabi depicting his friend as lazy, and said friend’s interest in getting married? Why the Alake outlaw Team Work, and why was it deemed a bad thing? Are we not supposed to know this? Little is established. Nothing is developed. Nothing has any real standing to get the audience to invest in it. Mere scenes; Bad plot.
To its credit, this movie does try to put a few notes right. There’s a decent (-ish) set design; whereby the houses in Oyo are seemingly made of sturdier material than the houses in Ake, kind of depicting the different material realities of different places. It’s fleeting, it’s not really touched on, but it’s there. There’s also a scene where good camera work depicts fatalism – we see a character see a knife, then we no longer see the knife, and we know where it’s gone. Plus, it does try to lay a glove at displaying some sort of imperial extractive relations that Oyo has with neighbouring towns/villages/places.
But a lot of this still contradicts itself. First, we establish that the tribute collectors are some sort of paper tigers, and we establish that Lisabi seems to realise this; then in the third act, we depict them as having powers beyond what they seem, not to mention undoing that conclusion that Lisabi reaches with the solution he initially proposes, and then never telling why he went back to recognising that force was the only means of resistance feasible (or whether he always knew that). Things just seem to happen without any real direction. Mere scenes; Bad plot.
From a directing perspective, Lisabi also misses its mark. A lot of relations between people lack authenticity, from verbal communication to non-verbal communication, and every character action – from word spoken to reaction – seems intent on spelling everything out for any other character they’re currently sharing the screen with (and sometimes it’s just rushed and empty). Some of the acting falls into the category ‘yelling in agony is good acting’ and it’s so overdone, it becomes hard to watch. Diction is as shaky and repetitive as dialect is unconvincing, theme sounds don’t match scenes, run for too long, or do both, and it all just falls flat.
Which begs the question; what is Lisabi? A tale of a legend? A sign that we can incorporate (cringe) CGI into our films now? A depiction of action? A rushed first work that simply wants to garner as many notable actors and celebrities as it can and set up a sequel/franchise? A reminder that Nollywood is still lacking in many areas in film? Or a microcosm of Netflix and movies right now? Like Man City at Newcastle in the Saturday 12:30 kick-off, once it’s done, you tell yourself ‘yeah, somehow, I watched that…whatever that was’.
On About Nothing Rating: 3/10.
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