The irrelevancies in Chief Daddy: Going for Broke (WN Review)

When a sequel to the Chief Daddy movie was announced, there were people who weren’t excited about it simply because their expectations had not been met by the first one, and people who sincerely hoped that the mediocrity in the first movie would be corrected in the sequel. However, by the reviews on social media platforms since the release of the sequel, it is evident that people are yet again disappointed by the watery storyline of the movie.

While it is hard to not notice the writers’ unintelligent attempt to be funny, the loopholes in the story flashed all over our faces like a zealous gala seller trying to sell in Lagos traffic. It felt so much like the incompetence was a deliberate attempt to ridicule the audience’s right to an intelligent plot.

Chief Daddy: Going for Broke from start to finish was a combination of ‘join join’ that it was so hard to believe that professional writers were paid to write the story. Intern screenwriters could have done an excellent job compared to what we saw in the 1hr 53mins of the movie.

Hard Questions

Watching the movie, some plots stuck out with questions that were left unanswered.

Q: Where did Laila come from?

This sequel centers around Laila (Rahama Sadau), the illegitimate daughter of Chief Daddy’s attempt to take over the family business. She came out of nowhere and there are many questions surrounding her existence in the movie.

She was introduced abruptly without a proper follow-up to make the audience understand who she or her mother is. Unlike others whose mothers were given a proper backstory, she got none and her existence is very questionable. So much that one can mistake her for an outsider who has come to take the family on some malignant feud with them.

Maybe this was deliberate to make her seem like an enemy of the family, but that twist was really unnecessary and made her character shaky.

Q: Why exactly did they have to go to Dubai?

Without sugarcoating it, going to Dubai in Chief Daddy: Going for Broke was a total waste of time and money. The reason for that is simply because everything that was done in Dubai in the movie could have been done here in Nigeria.

Assuming that all Handsome Guy (Okikiola Bakare) told Big Money Famzy (Folarin ‘Falz’ Falana) in the club was the truth about his Arab connect, why would anyone in their right sense just up and decide to go to Dubai to find the investor without a proper link to finding him.

That part of the movie made it seem like Dubai is a Local Government Area in Lagos State where you can just enter and start looking for someone and easily find them (which is not even easy for an LGA in Lagos with close to 100,000 people in it).

Two grown adults left Nigeria and went to Dubai to look for an Arab investor they have no idea where to find and eventually met Omar (Broda Shaggi) who inspired Famzy and helped him navigate the rough waters he found himself.

If motivation is the only reason the writers took us to Dubai, then that’s an expensive kind of motivation. Considering that Broda Shaggi does not live in Dubai and his part in the movie could simply have been shot here in Nigeria.

Q: What is the dynamics of the relationship between the two sisters and Prince Sonny?

Laila’s right-hand man in the movie is Prince Sonny (Uzor Arukwe) who works closely with her. Seeing how the family was plotting to get the company back from her, one would have thought that what Tinu (Funke Akindele-Bello) and Teni (Kate Henshaw-Nuttal) were going to do when he started flirting with them is use him to their advantage.

It was Teni who liked Prince Sonny but it ended up happening that he likes Tinu instead, and this nearly created a fight between the two sisters. To settle the fight, he had suggested that the two sisters can share him and even though they had stormed out angry at the proposition, we had seen another scene where they had come to terms with it.

Seeing how the family’s problems were solved without Prince Sonny, the important question to ask regarding the relationship between the three is that to what end is the relationship and what purpose does it serve in the movie?

Q: Why did some of the cast talk only once or twice throughout the movie?

Watching Chief Daddy: Going for Broke, it was so glaring that the movie has a rich and robust cast of actors and actresses, but it is also noticeable that those incredible talents were not properly utilized.

Madam Pat (Patience Ozonkwor) for example spoke only once or twice throughout the movie, likewise Donattus (Nkem Owoh). These two are not the only ones in the movie who had limited screen time which begs the question on whether they were there to act in the movie or they were merely paid for appearance.

Also looking at the cast of the movie on Netflix, only 16 were listed. However, IMDB has 39 listed with an omission of Ini Edo who also spoke only once or twice in the movie.

Conclusion

Since the release of Chief Daddy: Going for Broke, almost all the reviews about the movie has been of viewers complaining about the movie and how the story went.

This is understandable for a movie that much anticipation has been placed on but came out subpar, and while this will affect the rating of the movie, it shows how important to write movies with the audience in mind rather than trying to have a reunion of celebrities.