Punch's Review on 'Mirror Boy' Today

Director: Obi Emelonye
Featuring: Genevieve Nnaji, Osita Iheme, Fatima Jabbe, Edward Kagutuzi, Felix Cisse, Victor Carvalho
Tijan (Edward Kagutuzi), a black African boy in London, is 12 years old and in trouble with the law and his mother. He had tried to stand up to a bully - a white boy about his age. His mother Teema (Genevieve Nnaji), a single mother, decides Tijan will be better off back home and so takes him back to The Gambia.
On their first night, a boy appears to Tijan in the mirror. It soon becomes clear only Tijan can see the form he has named Mirror Boy (Osita Iheme) as no one believes his tale. Bent on completing her plan of settling Tijan in with her sister, Teema begins the trip with him. However, disaster strikes when Teema discovers Tijan missing in a crowded market. Tijan has apparently seen Mirror Boy whom he follows on a journey ‘home’.
The first thing about The Mirror Boy is that it is different from your usual Nollywood fare. It deals with issues that aren’t always found together in one package. There’s talk about the importance attached to the umbilical cord. Tijan’s had been buried in a forest by a father who’d barely accepted responsibility for his conception. But Tijan must now make the journey back home.
The journey which takes the Mirror Boy and Tijan through forests and many dangers can be likened to one of self-discovery. Perhaps it’s one journey every African needs to undertake seeing that many are not sure of their roots. The Mirror Boy is not all mystery as we see most of Africa’s problems pop up from greed to corruption and inadequate funding. Nonetheless, we see betrayal and lust for power, which are universal and no preserve of any region or race.
I went to see this film not knowing what to expect. But I came back feeling good about seeing something different.
That said, there are a few questions which plagued my mind. It’s welcome relief to see Osita Iheme alone playing a serious role although there’s unintended comic relief. Because some of the many proverbs Osita Iheme recites throughout the film sound strange coming from him (he sounds like a child trying to act tough as an adult), you lose some of the depth the words are supposed to convey. I also fail to understand Genevieve’s character and her transition from a hardened bitter (according to Tijan) single mother shipping off her only son home to the distraught mother after the boy’s lost. This is explicable but no one explains this change.
It also does not make sense that a mother taking her son - a total stranger - to Africa, through a very crowded market, manages not to keep him in her sight, walks very far ahead of him and goes for minutes without even the occasional glance over her shoulders to see where her son is. Don’t forget, he’s just 12 years old.
Well, there isn’t much to be done about my ‘questions’ but something that’s easier to correct are the subtitles. For some reason, most of Osita’s lines are subtitled but not always correctly and there are bits that get cut off. What’s more, there’s dialogue done in a strange language.