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FICTION
NIGERIAN
& ENTERTAINING THE 21ST CENTURY
A REVIEW OF UCHE
UDEAGBALA'S LEGENDARY SUCCESSES IN THE MODERN WORLD OF SHOWBIZ
by
Ismaila
Ikani Sule
It certainly is no easy feat
conquering the bombastic road to fortune and fame. A wise
man... or was it that lady who used to chase me around her
garden with a broom... once said "son, if you want to
pluck my mangoes, you must be very stupid because I didn't
spend ten years nurturing my plants just so some young rascal
can jump over my fence and start to chopulate (gobble)
them all for free". My point is... it certainly is no
easy feat conquering the bombastic road to fortune and fame.
Uche Udeagbala - from
Nigeria to Benin Republic, Egypt to Iraq, Jamaica to Norway,
China to Japan, Indonesia to India and Pakistan, from Russia,
Germany, France and the UK all the way to the USA - this has
become household name, a source of popular entertainment for
families (particularly those with hardly no reason at all to
be depressed). Without doubt the young superstar who hails
from the West African country of Nigeria has achieved, in such
little time, what most his peers could only dream about - he
is a movie star of international acclaim, Eminem can't
pronounce his last name and he intends to have only one lady
in his life. I know, you guys can't believe it.
Okay, we've all heard that
famous question of the 1990's "Who's
Uche?" and I'm not going to attempt to answer
that question ('cos I can't find the piece of paper I
scribbled the answer on). No, it's time to take a look at some
of the movies (or whatever they are) and Uche's works
responsible for all the noise about him. Click on the poster
images for larger versions.
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| Synopses |
POSTERS |
DynamUche
1979, somewhere on the banks of the River Thames,
Britain, the skies suddenly darken. Sinister clouds
gather together as a terrible rumble breaks out. A
bright flash. Something shoots out of the sky and into
the waters of the Thames with a magnificent explosion.
Silence. The skies clear. Two days later, Jameson, a
homeless character who has lost the same job thrice
decides it's time to quit life itself and flings
himself into the Thames with a boulder tied to his
tummy. As he struggles for breath underwater he sees a
baby's funny face smiling at him and yaaargh! the
frightened man scrambles out of the water dragging the
boulder behind him at top speed. Summoning enough
courage, he returns to fish out the child. The baby's
still alive and playing with a goldfish. Jameson takes
the child to a farmyard where he spends his nights and
raises the child as his own. He soon discovers the boy
is really an alien from outer space with some very unusual
superpowers. He names his adopted son Jameson II also
to be known as the super-hero DynamUche!
Remarks
- This was the film that launched Uche's onscreen
career. Shot entirely in London, the film grossed some
$56 million within the first three days of its release
in the UK and some $30 million afterwards in the USA.
DynamUche made it mandatory of every parent back then
to provide their kids with a pair of socks, pants and
a towel to tie around the neck. |
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The Campus Marshall
Kanna
Bombemall (Uche) finds life at Ros International
University to be far different from what he ever
expected. Constant closures as a result of staff
strike actions and campus violence leads a lot of
young people dropping out of school and roaming the
streets of Abuja City as unemployed thugs and very bad
football players. Violent student groups run various
sections of the campus each trying to dominate the
other in campus politics and uninteresting beauty
pageants. Kanna is the son of a village warrior and he
does his best to stay away from all the harmful groups
around him. But trouble seems to take a liking to him
and pretty soon, when a girl selling roast groundnuts
runs off with his wallet, Kanna decides its time to
impose some law and order. If the campus authorities
won't do it and get his wallet back, then Kanna will!
It's action and some pretty good tutorials on
preparing tasty roast groundnuts all the way!
Remarks
- Almost a decade after his debut as DynamUche,
Uche returns to the screen in this action-packed film
from Nigeria. Having to choose between a temporary job
as a roadside mechanic and starring in a local
Nigerian film (all due to the closure of the
university where he was studying Medicine as lecturers
went on strike) Uche decides to act again. While the
film was a local blockbuster, it didn't fare so well
outside Nigeria where many audiences could keep up
with all the local slang words and expressions despite
the subtitles. Some critics even called it a waste of
Uche's talents, but it was still a beautifully made
film we all enjoyed over here. It gave hope to those
poor students having to take up roadside jobs while
waiting for university lecturers to call off their
strike action. |
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Lemme
Marry Ya Daughter
A brilliant
collection of stage performances and musical videos by
Huushe Man (Uche) alongside a documentary on the
star's everyday life and his success story. Three
hours of every young lady's heart-throb and every
guy's babanla role model.
Remarks
- Uche once again baffled critics with his immense
talents for entertainment. At a period when many
American musicians were making movies towards the
movie industry, Uche made his own move into the music
industry. Growing dreadlocks and a new goatee beard he
transformed himself from quiet old Uche Udeagbala to
the handsome, dashing, and totally irresistible Huushe
Man. Huushe Man would grow into an international phenomenon,
selling over 45 million albums in forty-two different
countries around the globe in a period of six months,
raking in $320 million in sales to his record company.
Huushe Man's style was a fusion of afrobeat, reggae,
and rap and something called 'Huushe-Talk'. He was
nominated for five Grammy awards amongst others, out
of which he won three but had to collect them secretly
after the 2000 Awards ceremony because of fears for
the lives of the young girls and women in attendance
or watching from home on TV. This was as a result of a
nasty incident some months earlier in Holland where
thirteen teenaged girls collapsed at the sight of
Huushe Man at one of his concerts (one of them
remaining in a coma for about three days). Luckily,
their mothers wouldn't let their fathers press
charges. He still made it up to them by settling their
medical bills. |
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16
Desperate Desperadoes
16 friends
decide it's time to do something better with their
lives other than working for other people or
struggling to actually work for other people. They
become a band of reckless outlaws whose only pleasure
is embarrassing the police on the city's streets
(ripping officers' trousers, spitting chewing gum on
police cars and tricking dishonest law men with
Monopoly money as bribes). Soon they become the most
wanted criminals in the state and are forced to seek
refuge among the rocky hills. After nine months living
on the hills, the group's leader Terror Tamah (Uche)
introduces the use extreme sports as a means of
maintaining the morale of his boys. Some of them are
already writing letters to their mums telling them how
much they miss their cooking. Things don't go too well
though and some serious accidents begin to take place
almost daily, forcing the group to seek outside
training in extreme sports events like
rocky-hill-biking, tree diving and upside down human catapulting.
But with the law hot on their heels!...
Remarks
- This is definitely Uche's best performance ever.
This film made over $4 billion in theatres all around
the world merely a month after its release. Shot at
different locations in Nigeria, Jamaica, Singapore and
Malaysia, it was an excellent effort by both the
actors and the director. Thirteen months of stunt
training was involved (Uche, of course, insisting on
doing most of his own stunts). The film even boasts of
45 seconds of cameo appearance of Jackie Chan being
carried away on a stretcher. 16 Desperate Desperadoes
is a most-have film for movie-buffs and collectors
everywhere. |
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The
Doctor Who Went "Oops!"
Mayhem breaks
out in the little village community of Wahala when the
new doctor at the Community Hospital misplaces a
schizophrenic couple's new baby and has to convince
them that a fluffy teddy bear is actually their child
while he tries to find the real baby. More trouble
breaks out when a young female student returns home
with the baby in her school bag thinking she had made
a clean getaway with some tubers of yam from a nasty
old man's farm. Her parents insist on the identity of
the child's father even though she swears it's not her
baby. To make matters worse, the couple with the teddy
bear are related to the notorious Bala Wayyo a
notorious fighter leading a group of rebels fighting
for their own independent fishing pond. He's just
heard news of the new baby and he's coming to visit!
The doctor must move fast and find that baby!
Remarks
- This is an ingenious, outrageous slapstick
comedy written and directed by yours truly (thank you,
thank you) I.
I. Sule
in his first debut as a writer and director. Uche
plays two parts in this film - he is the schizophrenic
father and the nervous, panic-stricken doctor. |
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The Mattress
Re-Stuffed
Uchenna Maze
Okocha (Uche) is a Kaduna-based computer programmer
who finally decides to marry and settle down. He and
his new bride move into their new home on the
outskirts of town where they hope to start a happy new
family. That is until Uchenna purchases a king-sized
bed which appears to have some sinister qualities of
its own. No sooner does he dive on to it to try it out
at home than wires and cables shoot out from all over
the mattress holding him down securely while others
probe around and fasten themselves to his skull.
No-one hears him scream and he is drawn through an
experience of unbearable pain and torture before
finding himself transported to a cybernetic world of
vitual reality. He doesn't figure this out, believing
he is still in the real world, until he comes across
two guys with some extraordinary powers who carry out
impossible feats and explain things to him. An
Egyptian inventor had created what he believed would
give Internet users the ultimate web-surfing
environment based on virtual reality technology. His
invention had unfortunately also been witnessed by
unscrupulous mobsters who believed they could use it
for cyber-crime and when they try to seize it from
him, he is forced to hide three working versions of
his invention in three mattresses in his brother's
furniture store. The mobsters get to him and murder
him but can't find his gadgets. Oblivious to events
which had taken place in his furniture store, the
brother goes on to sell these mattresses along with
others which ultimately find their way into the Kaduna
Central Market. Two of the mattresses had already been
purchased months earlier by two perfect strangers
(Paul and Abdul), but now Uchenna had just acquired
the third. He has to learn to adapt to this new
environment fast because he may never leave. In the
real world, bereaved families watch helplessly as
electronics experts are unable to free these three
young men from the clutches of the gadgets holding
them in a coma-like state. That is until, some
foreigners arrive claiming to posses the technology
needed to save the young men's lives. First, they have
to attach themselves to the mattresses as well and get
into the world where Uchenna and his new friends roam
tirelessly searching for some means of escape. The
strangers' presence becomes apparent and their real
motives are even scarier - they are agents for the
mobsters and they need to find how things work in this
new world - how humans can get to wield such amazing
power. To do that, however, its three most experienced
human inhabitants must sacrifice their minds, lives
and of course... breakfasts! It's the ultimate cyber
battle for survival!
Remarks
- Costing a stated sum of N2.2
billion (about $18 million) to produce, this has to be
Nigeria's most expensive film ever made. The computer
graphics are superb, just like the stunt work and the
film has already grossed a cool $450 million in its
first week of simultaneous release in Nigeria and
Egypt. There's no stopping Uche? |
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