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Things No One Will Tell You About A Tribe Called Judah
It is no longer news that Naija’s biggest and most successful female thespian, Funke Akindele, has put in the market a new block buster movie called, ‘A Tribe Called Judah.’ What is news is that the movie is presently adjudged the most watched movie in the country. As we write this, it is said to have raked in well over N1.2billion naira for Funkle Akindele. There were dozens of other top movies that hit the cinemas just about the time A Tribe Called Judah did, with perhaps just a few weeks setting their release dates apart, but it has emerged the movie with the biggest commercial success. The utterly shocked but grateful Funke Akindele has taken to her social media pages several times to thank her fans as the news of the ever increasing earnings from A Tribe Called Judah continues to come in. Just a few days back, when the news broke that the movie had grossed over N1.2billion naira, a grateful Funke Akindele simply typed, “I no know wetin to type again.”
But what factors helped A Tribe Called Judah become the highest grossing Nigerian movie ever? What does the movie have that all other previous commercially successful movies didn’t have? What technical superiority does it have over other big movies that equally did well at the cinemas? City People did a bit of findings and here are five reasons people think Funke Akindele’s movie, A Tribe Called Judah earned it’s highest grosasing movie spot.
To begin with, many give Funke Akindele a lot of credit for pushing the movie well enough and giving it the required publicity it needed to soar in the market. The high flying actress obviously spared no expenses to ensure the movie made as much as noise as possible within the media space. What this did is that it continued to trigger the curiousity of many who had seen the trailer to want to see the movie. Using it’s unique and fascinating title as a leverage, the billboard posters, the online trailers, the media contents and positive reviews it generated were always staring at you in the face, you just couldn’t ignore the movie called, A Tribe Called Judah.
Another factor that helped the movie was the fact it was getting lots and lots of endorsements, thumbs ups and positive comments from the general public and even professional colleagues who have seen the movie. Soon, the words started spreading that it is a fantastic movie and this was coming from those who had seen the movie. The only question on the lips of movie watchers became, ‘have you watched A Tribe Called Judah’? It soon began to look like those who hadn’t seen the movie were missing out on something great and so had to find a way to also see the movie and join the bandwagon of happy Funke Akindele fans.
The story line of the movie also stands it out from the rest. It is not the regular story line that is common with Nollywood movies. Unlike the other regular movies that often have similar looking story lines that sometimes come in recycled form, A Tribe Called Judah boasts of a fresh story line that’s never been told before anywhere either directly or remotely. It is the story of a mother of five boys who are all grown up, each from a different father. Now, they are not just from different fathers, but the men all come from different tribes, hence the children are named Emeka, Adamu, Pere, Oluwashina and the youngest of them all, Ejiro played by the very talented Olumide Oworu. And they all had one surname – Judah, while their mother’s name, played by Funke Akindele, was Jedidah. From these five boys, Jedidah was able to train about three of them to become responsible young men. She wasn’t so lucky with the other two. They were into stealing and formenting trouble within the community along with their gangs. The entire story took a dramatic turn when their mother, Jedidah, suffered kidney failure and needed money for a transplant. Totally confused and feeling hopeless about ever raising the couple of millions of naira required for her medical treatment, the children resorted to stealing and the movie took a whole new turn. Indeed, it is a very captivating story line.
A Tribe Called Judah also touches significantly on the stigma associated with single motherhood. Jedidah, the mother of the five boys, is a single mother who had to endure a lot of sneering and snide remarks from her neighbours. Very few know her story. Very few bothered to ask why or how she ended up having five kids for five different men. Everyone simply concluded she was a wayward, sexually reckless woman who hopped from one man’s bed to another. But they were wrong. That wasn’t the case with Jedidah. She became a single mother of five due to very unusual circumstances. The movie, in it’s own way, preaches that, if nothing else, single mothers like Jedidah deserve support from the society, not condemnation.
In a subtle way, the movie also exposes some of the very creative ways criminal minded individuals engage in the dirty business called money laundering. It is our hope that security agencies have also taken notice of the movie and discovered another quite creative way money launderers can conceal things from them.
In all, A Tribe Called Judah is a beautiful artistic creation, a masterpiece and a work of art that will remain in our creative annals for a very long time to come. Judging from its ever increasing figures, the movie will still remain number one on the charts for quite a while this year, perhaps, hopefully, until another monster classic is created.
-WALE LAWAL (08037209290) and
ERICA BROWSON
