An intense plot, erotic scenes and immersive sound, ‘Hey You’ is the sort of movie you want to see with your spouse over a glass of fine wine in a scantily-lighted room in the middle of the night, and I would bet there’ll be a happy ending.

On this project that will pass as one of Nollywood’s best attempts at telling an x-rated story without lousy skin-crawling, Niyi Akinmolayan’s Anthill Studios partnered talented writer and director, Uyoyou Adia to deliver her second theatrical directorial as a worthy sequel to her successful first, ‘Charge and Bail.’ This romance drama and absolutely adult-only film, somehow survived the NFVCB’s gavel to make it to the cinemas nationwide on the 29th of July, 2022.

‘Hey You’ was produced by Victoria Akujobi , written and directed by Victoria Uyoyou, co-written by Niyi Akinmolayan with cinematography by Barnabas Emordi. The movie stars Timini Egbuson (Abel), Efe Irele (Bianca) and Rotimi Salami (Lanre) as regular individuals with bags of dirty little secrets; Temitope Olowoniya (‘The Boss’), Stan Eze (Chibueze) and a host of other fast-rising Nollywood actors as costarts, to deliver a great cast.

The story follows the happenstance of an introverted nerdy software engineer, Abel (Timini) ending up to as neighbour to his long-term sexual fantasy and devout sex camgirl, Bianca. Both individual’s double personalities draw them together in their various worlds of regular hardworking singles and flirtatious fun-seeking sort of perverts. Pretty much so with a typical Nigerian life, the failures of governance would have Bianca end up in Abel’s apartment and bathroom when power-cuts during her first ever premium sultry show was going to lead to her account getting suspended for poor reviews since two previously live episodes had been angrily dropped due to her reluctance to strip and do meet other harcore requests of clients.

Bianca is little less than a trollop, though she is a hobbyist stripper, often hiding behind a mask and the cam to do majorly basic sexting and erotic dances. Going premium on her famous ‘Fans Only’ account means she satisfies the requirement of paid customers, majorly chronic perverts.

This very night, Darknight (Abel’s FanOnly pseudo name) was her last attempt to break her walls and slut limitlessly. Now she’s ironically in Abel’s bathroom in the middle of an intense cam-sex interrupted by power cuts.

The story centres on the flux of events that took Abel and Bianca on the journey of finding self and finding love next door. Through a highly thrilling plot, the duplicitous lives of both titters between reality and secret fantasy with their actual jobs and existence fighting against their yarn to strip the world down to a solo stage for their magnetic romance.

Abel would lose his much-hated job to Lanre (Rotimi Salami)’s backstabbing. Bianca loses hers too to Abel’s mistake and falls back into the waiting arms of her off-and-on billionaire-heir boyfriend, Habib (Seyi Awolowo) with Abel left to deal with heart wreck of losing both Bianca (his inferred first love) and Caramelgoodess (his over-the-cam sexual fantasy that turned out to be Bianca).

The dual personality of most ordinary people, the turns and the twist of balancing out reality and fantasy, love and the conundrums of making a choice between alternative attractions are items this film is themed around.

The Plot

‘Hey You’ has an excellent plot. The characters were brilliantly introduced in a cascade, with a fierce porny lap-dance opening scene that exposed the mood and tone of the story. Within the first two scenes of the film, one is easily drawn into the world of the story’s protagonists, Abel and Bianca. Of course a cute smart software engineer, yanking-off while watching an NGO child-care giver moonlighting as voluptuous sex-cam bunny quickly sets the mind on a curiosity train.

The conflict and rising actions of the plot are so well layered, coming at appropriate turns after a lot of good doses of love, erotica and everyday life. Here we are, Abel is finally hooked to a real human, Bianca emotionally entwined to her neighbour and ‘Fan Only’ client (without her knowing) then the ‘big boy’, every woman’s dream-boyfriend shows up with his airs to claim his woman, just as depicted in the famous 2003 Style-plus song ‘Call My Name’.

Lots of twist and turns in the plot that keeps the mind shut from concluding on ‘happily ever after’ ending for Abel and Bianca. Like Bianca having to find out that Abel knew about ‘Caremelgoodess’ all along, when she got pulled into her boss’ office and queried for letting her friend (Abel) gift the orphanage his drawings that included explicit contents. How funny that ‘Mama’ was here advising her staff to avoid relating with such ‘dirty-minded people’ unaware that the slutty bunny girl drawn all over the pages of the book was actually her.

Just the previous scene, Abel had beat the holdbacks, professed his love for Bianca; the shy boy broke the glass door with the pickup lines “…you’ve opened a space in my heart and I want you to be the one to fill it…”. Bianca responded with a sealed lip! Just kidding, locked to his, and the pleasuring that have only existed in their minds played out in the perfect cloud of lust and thrust. Such a salivating scene, accentuated with a perfect smash song.

Now, Bianca is right in front of Abel with rage and fears, bitterness and disappointment, casting aspersions at him for being so vile as to gift the innocent orphan a lewd material! Of course, Abel discredits the self-righteousness with his own outburst of having his now love-of-my-love stripping over the cam for every man out there.

“You know that’s funny, the most amazing things always turn out to be a lie”, was Bianca’s parting statement that set off the stage for the falling actions of the plot. Beautiful!

The climax didn’t have a sharp drop too, more twists went on to obfuscate what the resolution and ending might look like. Abel getting to save Bianca from a rapist was his chance to get back into her arms after an extended impasse, but the quick awakening to the fact that he must have been spying on her to have seen promptly when her live-cam session turned awry only further exasperated Bianca. And shortly afterwards, Habib rushes in to comfort his woman and dismiss Abel, the heroic neighbour with a brief thank you.

The not-so-perfect boyfriend just at this lowly point stands by her despite the public disgrace of her moonlight identity getting out on social media. To comfort her, he wires N2million as support to the fund-raising cause for the orphanage Bianca started, then caps that with a beautiful diamond engagement ring! Abel’s lost the war already, let this film end right here!

Cinematography

Barnabas “Barny” Emordi, AMVCA nominated filmmaker and cinematography delivered an excellent work as Director of Photography for this project. This movie being his third cinematography work in 2022 alone speaks to how much his work is appreciated in the industry. From the lighting to angles, camera lenses and composition, etc., every scene of this movie was shot to paint the fine details of its immersive plot.

Some scenes are worthy of note amongst the whole body of work. First, the scene where Bianca seats with Abel in a two-seater in his apartment, with a bicycle hung overhead, while he pitches love to her; filmed at an inclined angle to frame the love-birds well blended into the beautiful, but playful set. Another is the scene, also at Abel’s apartment, where Bianca tells him about the issues with the orphanage – the blurred out hollowed wall taped around with subtle green lighting with flower vases (tulip and roses) forms an alluring background for the cute side views of the beautiful love birds on the foreground –Picture Perfect!

The highlight that sets this piece from Bardy on a whole new pedestal in creative cinematography was the scene shortly after Abel found out that Bianca and Cararemelgoodess were same persons and was basking in the euphoria of having his fantasy jump right into his reality; Abel’s creative mind imagined himself and Bianca kissing and making out and this was beautifully narrated with a wall-projected 2d animation splashed across Abel’s room.

The creative use of illustrations to bring alive chats, emotions, events, tones and communications was a further dive into the riveting story. Barnabas brought his A-game to this project. Period.

Characterization and Acting

For this work, casting is good but could have been better. The lead cast was perfect though a few acts like Stan Eze and Rotimi Salami only did averagely well. Temitope Olowoniya was the big tech boss with the big backside (sort of an icing on the story’s effort at erupting sensuality), and she was great at ‘bossing’ Lanre, Chibueze and Abel around.

The geeky Timini, is a brilliant switch to this stereotyped bad boy of Nollywood. Now the touchy hunk had to be prepped into romance, what a satisfying revenge for the host of female haters. There were scenes he struggled to deliver the timidity of a sex-deprived nerd.

Efe Irele

Efe Irele? What a fit! Super beautiful, sexy and alluring screen goddess. Then a face and smile that fits the dual personality she role-played in this movie. Bianca is the heart of this film; her personality that bothers on two addictive extremes would bait anyone to see the movie to the end. Efe delivered 100 percent, easily switching from seductress to governess, from sultry to sweet, from erotic to altruistic affording the rollercoaster ride the viewers will pay to watch.

The dialogues though, were rushed up, mostly basic and not so different from an average Nollywood movie’s. The lead actors through excellent characterization leveled up this gap, but for the not-so-great ones, the dialogues gave them out. This points to the fact that the scriptwriting could have been much better. You would give it up for the creative storytelling though. Dark knight moonlighting as a perfect neighbour turned lover by happenstance, took the conversation back to ‘FansOnly’ to ask Caramelgoodess how to win a woman’s heart, without her knowing she was rather training him to win her heart. Nollytrailers also noticed that the story’s inferred wisdom that one can get inspired by a massive breakthrough idea in some not-so-prideful secret indulgence is also a cap.

There is always that very unserious friend and the Chibueze, ‘Chi-boy’ character, was sort of that narration aside from being its comical spice. That role was not delivered at an excellent level.

The scene where Abel confronts Lanre for tipping him over the cliff, snitching to the boss about his private business, and getting him fired, with his other atrocities was rather tepid. The chats were bland, role-playing weak to the bottom low for all three actors. It was tepid up until the twist, where their boss comes along to fire Lanre having overheard him admitting to attempted rape through an open phone call Chubueze had surreptitiously placed as a ploy to nail Lanre. In Chibueze’s words, ironically summarizing the delivery of that scene “…guy, last last, you’ve been served”

Sound Design/Music

The sound design was okay, not excellent. Original productions/compositions (by Obaro Yanx, others), good music and perfect selections for each scene. But, the sound quality below current industry standard. Notable misses are volume imbalance, disjointed transitional fades and a few music overlap glitches.

Overall Production Quality

The overall production quality will be a B-grade. A lot of vital parameters checked but issues with casting and characterization, sound quality, dialogues, etc sort of robbed the excellent plot and cinematographic work of its valid 5-Star rating. Then, the plot’s resolution and final scene, the big miss:

The part Habib comes just before the wedding, with Seyi’s hair freshly cut, speaks to the details of the production. The Nikai (Muslim wedding ceremony, which is a good departure from the trite church wedding), the Set design, costumes, Habib’s lines…”we’ve come a long way to this day, and beyond everything we have fought for, let’s make us work”, was absolutely beautiful symphony of creative until Abel shows up at the venue and the film turned into a stupid Nollywood of hackneyed Hollywood stop-the-wedding romance movies final cut.

Despite the few glitches, this movie is a 4/5 and should be on everyone’s watch list.

Review 0

3.9 Reviewer

Users 0 (0 votes)

Theme5

Screenwriting3.5

Visual Design4

Cinematography5

Editing4

Sound and Music3

Acting3

Directing4

What people say... Leave your rating

Sort by: Most recent Top score Most helpful Worst score

Be the first to leave a review.

Verified

{{{ review.rating_title }}}

{{{review.rating_comment | nl2br}}}

Show more

{{ pageNumber+1 }}

Leave your rating

Your browser does not support images upload. Please choose a modern one

• Theme
• Screenwriting
• Visual Design
• Cinematography
• Editing
• Sound and Music
• Acting
• Directing