Director: Biodun Stephen
Writer: Biodun Stephen
Cast: Bimbo Ademoye, Timini Egbuson, Shaffy Bello, Temilola Aladese, Jayeola Kuti,
Year of Release: 2023
Streaming On: Prime Video
Two people of different social statuses finding love together? A single mother avoiding romance at all costs but finding her match in an intentional man? It’s all been done.
Over and over, the art of bringing “damsels in distress” to life has given screenwriters the ability to take viewers to Cinderella’s world and torture those of us plagued with an obsession for happy endings.
And it is common for them to amplify the woes of the damsels just to dial up the sympathy.
In 2020’s This Lady Called Life, Aiye is a single mother juggling a strained maternal relationship and a stalled catering profession.
In 2017, there was also Tiwa in Tiwa’s baggage: broke, fortunate not to be homeless, and juggling relatives who continuously mock her for her condition.
These two women at the point where their knights arrived, were already evidently going through a lot. Unlike these two, Big Love positions the lead female character, Adina(Bimbo Ademoye) as a damsel not defined by her distress.
Adina is well-to-do in her own right. She can afford necessities, and if we infer that she only contacted her deadbeat baby daddy for posterity, we may be correct.
Yet, she experienced her big love. In fact if not that breakfast is real, I would have said she should just follow Adil from the scene of that first kiss.
I mean what’s a small gutter of premium tears for a man who swims an ocean for you😫. He even lied to his family that Adina’s child is his just so they wouldn’t object to the idea of him and her as a couple.
I’m digressing, but perhaps you get my point. Big Love’s production demonstrates that damsels do not have to be oppressed. to have their Cinderella story.
Biodun Stephen presents a masterpiece that will have you aww-ing to no end using her famous recipe, that is: power the film with outstanding casting + put simplicity in the driver’s seat + tight storytelling as the conductor.
The cast also does an impeccable and excellent job.
Timini and Bimbo Ademoye reprise their familiar Breaded Life on-screen chemistry as Adil and Adina, respectively, and navigate their soft big love amidst compromises, deception, and familial acceptance.
The dramatic and lovely Nigerian mothers and aunts played by Jayeola Kuti and Shaffy Bello provide a welcome respite from the corrosive representations of in-laws.
Overall, Big Love is insistently giddy, well-played, filled with moral teachings, and many heart-rolling-in-chest scenes that I have to admit I have rewatched an excessive number of times- and will continue to do so until Biodun Stephen produces something else I can obsess over.
Big Love is Biodun Stephen’s debut production with Inkblot, and it is presently streaming exclusively on Prime Video after grossing 20 million naira in theatres within a few days of its June 2023 premiere, edging out Flash and Transformer.
Xplore Nollywood rates Big Love an 8/10.
