NAMASTE WAHALA MOVIE REVIEW
Namaste Wahala is a Rom-com, set in modern-day Nigeria wherein Nollywood meets Bollywood. It is Hamisha Daryani Ahuja’s debut movie starring Ini Dima-Okojie and Ruslaan Mumtaz as the lead woman
and man alongside, Richard Mofe-Damijo, Joke Silva, Sujata Sehgal etc
The movie opens with Didi and Raj bumping into each other at the beach. The couple stare at each other for a moment and are interrupted by Raj’s friend Emma (Koye Kekere Ekun). They part ways. Didi meets up with her friend Angie (Anee Icha) and at the same time, Raj is over at his place discussing the girl with Emma. Raj says he believes in love at first sight and hopes to marry the girl. Emma is more sceptical, thinking she might be a mermaid, crazy or married.
Didi has breakfast with her parents and Somto (Ibrahim Suleiman), an employee of her father comes over. We find out her father, Ernest, heads a law-firm and hopes Didi would not only work for him but marry Somto. Didi visits Ange, meets her in tatters over a breakup. She consoles her friend and invites her for a fundraiser. Raj is at the party and takes a call from his mother, he had missed 10 calls from her and we find out he’s the only child. Raj and Didi meet again, twice on the same day. Raj and Didi’s colleague, Leila (Hamisha Daryani Ajuja) are cousins. Raj tells Didi (in a totally, not at all, creepy way) that he wants to marry. Seriously, that is the third thing he said to her! Next thing we know Didi and Raj are singing which is cool, provided you love that sort of thing.
By the time the song is over, it has been three months in the movie and feels the same time has elapsed in real life. Raj tells Didi he wants to marry her but Didi is worried because her parents have no idea, she’s dating an Indian. She musters the courage to tell her parents and Raj visits them later. Ernest is not impressed and tells Raj how he feels in the most disrespectful way he can think of. Raj is distraught and Emma talks to him, guiding him on what he should and should not have done. Talk about putting the horse after the cart. Raj confronts Didi. He is mad she did not prepare her parents (or him for that matter) for the meeting. At that moment, Raj’s mom, Meera calls. She is in the country. Meera arrives at his place and in less time than I can say, Jack Robinson, she is talking about marriage. Didi gets a call. One of their clients, Jane, has had an encounter with one of her clients. Didi intends to sue the guy but it turns out the guy is also a client of her father. She talks it over with her father and a head-to-head legal battle seems inevitable.
MI shows up in the movie for some reason.
Didi and her client have a meeting with her dad, Ernest, his firm and the boy accused of assault. It turns out the girl had cut his hand during their altercation and he claims self-defence. They show pictures to prove their point. Didi goes to the hotel but they refuse to grant her the tapes. She confronts her father about it and moves out of their home despite her mother’s pleas. She goes to Raj’s place and whilst they are there, Meera shows up. They have a confrontation and Didi wishes to leave. Raj begs her and tells Meera, if Didi leaves, so will he. His mother agrees to let her stay with the proviso that they share a bed. The next morning, Meera and Didi wake and both cook for Raj, Didi makes indomie but his mother makes him a spectacle of Indian culinary.
A funny scene ensues where both serve Raj and he is forced to eat both meals. That evening, Shola goes looking for Didi, first at Ange’s place then at Raj’s. A quarrel ensues between Shola and Meera, with Meera calling Didi a slut and Shola insinuating that Raj lacks home training. Didi gets mad at Raj and moves out. She continues her work on the case, going to the hotel to talk to the CEO himself. He is willing to help and it turns out he has a crush on Leila and is the admirer who has been sending her flowers. He sends the tapes to Didi. They watch it and like clockwork, the guy assaulted her in the corridor. Didi takes the footage to the meeting and shows the opposing counsel. Ernest agrees to pay 75 million naira in damages. Emma is signed to chocolate city. I guess that’s why MI was in the movie. She has a heart-to-heart with her Shola. She tries to talk her out of marrying the Indian guy, Didi reminds her she is a Yoruba woman who married an Igbo to which her mother tells her she would not want Didi to go through the same thing. Leila comes and talks to her aunt and convinces her to give Didi a chance. Mother and son visit Didi’s family for lunch. During the meal, Meera insults Ernest, calling him stupid for not supporting his daughter’s dream and somehow that brings him to his senses. The man terminates his deal with the client and gives his blessing for the marriage.
The next scene is the wedding between the couple. The movie ends.
There is a post-credit scene wherein Meera and Ernest are talking, the former expects dowry while the latter expects bride price for his daughter.
Namaste Wahala is a good movie that puts focus on the dynamics and clashes that come with cross-cultural marriages with a particular focus on Nigerian versus Indian culture. The title itself is an oxymoron with “namaste” and an Indian greeting which translates loosely to “I bow to you” (Namaste, n.d.) and a Nigerian pidgin word “Wahala” which means trouble. This denotes the troubles that should come with a lovely thing as marriage with both sides come from two different cultural backgrounds. The movie itself is great and Ahuma does her best to demonstrate the pressure that society and parents place on young well-to-do if unmarried children. The story is universal and timeless, and the actors do their utmost to convey the sense of pain that pricks everyone both the parents and children.
However, the movie is not without its faults. The entire first act of little relevance. It might as well have commenced from the moment Raj asked Didi to marry him and it would not make a difference. The B-story is subpar. Having Didi defend Jane not only exposes her as a weak lawyer, how it resolved seems like a cheap plot contrivance to get to the end of the movie quicker. There is too much convenience in the sequence of events that it becomes hard to believe. The boy beating up the girl in the corridor in the plain view of the cameras and the CEO of the hotel being Leila's secret admirer made the entire thing to easy to unravel. Also, the subplot is supposed to run concurrently to the main plot and fit seamlessly such that the audience doesn’t feel like it is watching two stories. Instead, we get long intervals of either story to a point where A plot and B plot don’t complement each other.
Finally, the reconciliation: It felt forced and unnatural. There is no major event that makes everyone change their mind about marriage. One moment they are at daggers drawn, the five minutes, everyone is merry, and all is well. It felt forced. The movie should have, from scene to scene, convinced both sides that marriage is not a bad idea or have some momentous event that brings both families together.
These faults and more mean I give the movie a rating of 5.5/10.
Average.
Hesley Fonane.