Nigerian Prince (2018)

Nigerian Prince: Directed by Faraday Okoro. With Antonio J Bell, Chinaza Uche, Tina Mba, Bimbo Manuel. After being sent to Nigeria against his will, a stubborn Nigerian-American teenager joins forces with an Internet scammer in order to return to the United States.

“Full disclosure: We streamed this film in our house during Covid, so the viewing experience was different more like watching with occasional commentary than if it was in a movie theater.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe good: I generally liked the film. I found it entertaining and interesting enough to keep my attention. While watching, you could tell that it was made on a budget, but they did a good job with the film. The plot kept us interest by leaving us guessing what the characters are doing and why they were doing it. The movie was not super fast paced but there were tense moments (including violence) and things were sufficiently broken up that it did not have long dragging segments.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe bad: If I had one complaint, it would be the setup. The history of why the protagonist is sent to Nigeria is left very vague and affected the evaluation of the movie. An ancillary question to the plot is why anybody would think sending the protagonist to Nigeria was good idea? This question is so pervasive that it made it tough to suspend disbelief and tough to relate to the protagonist. Our groupu0026#39;s speculative assessments of this issue ranged from 1. he is a young adult who, like most kids, is stuck with his parentsu0026#39; decisions because he is too young to legally make his own decisions, to 2. he is an evil (or amoral) thug who is on the run from his dark past. This speculation had a large impact on whether each viewer was able to identify with, and be interested in, the protagonist and what happened to him, ultimately determining how much each liked the movie. I was closer to the first group, so liked the movie more than others that watched with me.”