Wedding Party Review

Story by Mo Abudu, Tosin Otudeko, Kemi Adetiba & One other person I can't remember
Screenplay by Tosin Otudeko and Kemi Adetiba
Box office: N200,000,000 and counting (In 16 days)
Budget: N60,000,000


Strongest Feature: Effortlessly hilarious, great picture quality, fantastic acting, appropriate sound tracks and sound.

Screenplay review: Almost flawless, whatever flaw it has has been swamped by the humor and great acting. I even had to shed a little tear at some point... yeah it got me. Interestingly the story is pretty much about forgiveness than it is about a wedding party. If it were a core christian movie, I'm sure the title would have been coined, 'forgiveness'.

The opening hook was fantastic. We started and ended with the zealous wedding planner. The epiphany Dozie's mum had while at gun point was subtly created without verbalizing it... That's another definition of awesome.

So, this is how the scorecard stands...

A story structure has the beginning, middle and end.

1st act/The beginning/set up must haves:	Wedding Party
Begin with a memorable image/hook	Present
1.       Find the catalyst/motivation e.g information about the situation, where are we? What’s going on here? Or something or an event to start the story. It could be a gun shot, an explosion or a letter arrives.	Absent
1.       Raise the central question	Absent
2.       Establish the conflict.	Present
3.       Establish the antagonist.	Present
4.       Ends with the 1st turning point. It is a twist and turn that changes the story’s direction as new event unfold and new decisions are made.	Present
The 2nd act/middle/development must haves: 1.       Begins with the 1st turning point.	Present
2.       Momentum (a cause and effect/action and reaction scenes)/Action points/dramatic event that causes a reaction.	Present
3.       Barriers stop the action for a moment, and then the character goes around it and continues.	Present
4.       Complication is an action point that doesn’t pay off immediately but we wait for it and anticipate the inevitable response. And it gets in the way of the character’s intention.	Present
5.       Reversals change the direction of the story 180 degrees/ moving it from positive to negative.	Present
6.       Puts the central character in jeopardy.	Present
The 3rd act/resolution/end must haves:
1.       Begins with the 2nd turning point and speeds up the action here, makes it intense, and gives a sense of urgency like a ticking clock.	Present
2.       The big finish/climax/ The question is answered/not answered.	Present
3.       Resolution.	Present

The only missing plot are the inciting incidence and central question. I wonder why that plot was omitted. It's something one scene could fix but a lame man wouldn't know any plot was missing. It was too much fun.

I love wedding party for many reasons; top of which is that the film vindicated me. Most people I have been in conversations with, tend to believe global best practice for screenplay is for the West... the oyinbos, that it doesn't apply to us, Nigerians. I have always argued without proof that the Nigerian audience is not averse to the classical 3-act structure for screenplay.

And there you have it, wedding party is trumping at the box office, beating 30days in Atlanta, Jenifa and other erstwhile box office hits with skewed storyteller style.

My Verdict

Kemi and Tosin are discharged and acquitted for 'slaying' the screenplay and given a
copy each of Linder Seger's 'making a good script great'