Plan B

Lowladee is back again! The filmmaker who brought us one of our favorite web-series’, “This Is It“, takes us all on a trip to Kenya with her latest digital film Plan B.

Plan B is a cute little sixty minute film about a lower-middle class stylist who spends a night with a well to do Nigerian-Expatriate in Kenya and then ends up pregnant. Somewhere in the middle of her bid to get him to at least take financial responsibility, the two end up falling for each other and possibly living happily ever after. Do you feel that should have been a spoiler alert? Did anyone really think it was going to end differently?

From her previous work in “Brave” to “A Place Called Happy“, one thing that goes without saying is that Lowladee is especially skilled in intimate corners and close spaces. She has perfected the art of pulling the audience into the middle of a romance so much so that they feel like it is theirs, and this is not much different. This film is not just brief as far as the run-time is concerned, it’s also brief in characters and brief in storytelling. There is really not much else going on here asides from watching these two characters fall for each other. However, Lowladee manages to execute it in a manner where you are not overwhelmed by the vacancy of the entire thing, instead you are almost entirely pulled in – but not all the way in this case.

Plan B is a basic, cute and forgettable love story between two adorable characters and not much else. Sarah Hassan is a beauty to look at who is blessed with enough acting chops to not loose the audience at any point during the sixty minute run-time. However, the real treat here is Catherine Kamau Karanja. Catherine plays Joyce, the ever boisterous but always supportive friend. As the comic relief, she does much to keep the movie running during the moments that would otherwise lag, and her effortless comic timing is able to execute this task to perfection. Hers is the character we all love to love on screen but might not really be able to tolerate in real life. It’s not an original role – in that every other romantic film has one (think of Funke Akindele in “Isoken” and Toni Tones in “Royal Hibiscus Hotel“) – regardless, a proper execution of the character still deserves some applause.

Then there was Daniel Etim-Effiong. Finally Folarin gets the lead role we’ve been waiting for but it’s not yet the lead role he deserves. Even though here he shows us that he can do much more than form ‘hard guy’, this romantic lead doesn’t have enough going on to afford him an opportunity to show us his chops. Recently some of our favorite hard guys have turned to lover boys (see Uzor Arukwe in “Wo.Men Are Scum“) but either by factor of the length or the brevity of the story, this film doesn’t do as much for him as the other did for Arukwe. Be that as it may, Daniel still manages to create an air around his character of Dele that I don’t doubt will have many ladies swooning.

Plan B is cute. It is sweet. But unfortunately it also quite forgettable.