Buzz Movie Review: Sugar Rush
When I saw the trailer for Sugar Rush, I was worried. From the trailer, it seemed like this would be another aimless comedy movie with all glitz and no proper story. This has
been the trend in Nollywood for a while but some filmmakers have been able to avoid this path of crass movies while telling excellent stories that have also achieved major success like Isoken and King Of Boys. Jade Osiberu’s name was used as a selling point for this movie and if you don’t pay attention to details, you’d think she was the director because of the way her name was plastered over the film’s promotion material. Turns out that she wasn’t the director but the producer of the flick. Come to think of it, I probably wouldn’t have watched this movie if Jade Osiberu’s name wasn’t attached to it.
Over the years, Jade has built quite a strong profile for herself in Nollywood with her involvement in projects like Gidi Up, Nigerian Trade and Isoken. On Sugar Rush, she serves as the producer while Kayode Kasum serves as the director. The way the film was marketed with Jade’s name as a recurring piece in its marketing suggests that she probably funded the movie and if that is the case, then she has started cashing out already. It has been reported that the movie had made over 150 million naira in less than 2 weeks of its release date.
Sidenote - If you’re ever curious about Nollywood’s numbers, check the website of the Cinema Exhibitors Association of Nigeria.
Its glorious streak at the cinemas has been cut short due to what Jade Osiberu has described as “issues that are way beyond our control”. She also stated that according to her distributor (Filmone Distribution), the numbers for Sugar Rush were tracking just behind the highest-grossing Nollywood of all time before the film was pulled out of cinemas. So why was it removed from the cinemas in the first place?
Word on the street is that a particular government agency was not happy about how it was portrayed and put pressure on the distributors to have it taken out of the cinemas. This unconfirmed report quickly hit social media and it didn’t take long for the hashtag #BringBackSugarRush to trend. Chika Ichibor, the head of corporate affairs for the National Film and Video Censor Board put out a rather vague statement that didn’t explain why the film got removed in the first place but assured Nigerians that the film will definitely return to the cinemas.
This takes us back to the issue of the film’s removal and the so-called disgruntled government agency that had the film removed in the first place. To address this, I’ll have to get into details of the film so consider this a spoiler alert of sorts.
Mawuli Gavor and Williams Uchemba act as agents of the Economic Financial Crimes Commission who are tasked with recovering stolen funds from the house of a popular businessman. Their mission is to gather as much intel as possible by surveilling the home of this same businessman, a mission which they terribly fail at due to their own incompetence but by some miracle, they obtain video footage of two sisters Sola Sugar (Bisola Aiyeola) and Lola Sugar (Adesua Etomi) leaving the home of this shady businessman with a bag full of money (read 100 dollar bills). Their boss (Omoni Oboli) berates them over their incompetence and they try to soothe her anger by showing her the video of the Sugar sisters leaving the house but they were down on their luck again as the video mysteriously disappeared from the EFCC’s servers. In a much later scene, these same agents illegally abduct the Sugar sisters. This is basically what got EFCC pissed enough to get rid of the movie.
As for the movie itself, it serves up a couple of good laughs backed by a pretty much solid storyline but it still manages to lose its vim in the end, thanks to a few questionable scenes.
When I saw the trailer for Sugar Rush, I was worried. From the trailer, it seemed like this would be another aimless comedy movie with all glitz and no proper story. This has
been the trend in Nollywood for a while but some filmmakers have been able to avoid this path of crass movies while telling excellent stories that have also achieved major success like Isoken and King Of Boys. Jade Osiberu’s name was used as a selling point for this movie and if you don’t pay attention to details, you’d think she was the director because of the way her name was plastered over the film’s promotion material. Turns out that she wasn’t the director but the producer of the flick. Come to think of it, I probably wouldn’t have watched this movie if Jade Osiberu’s name wasn’t attached to it.
Over the years, Jade has built quite a strong profile for herself in Nollywood with her involvement in projects like Gidi Up, Nigerian Trade and Isoken. On Sugar Rush, she serves as the producer while Kayode Kasum serves as the director. The way the film was marketed with Jade’s name as a recurring piece in its marketing suggests that she probably funded the movie and if that is the case, then she has started cashing out already. It has been reported that the movie had made over 150 million naira in less than 2 weeks of its release date.
Sidenote - If you’re ever curious about Nollywood’s numbers, check the website of the Cinema Exhibitors Association of Nigeria.
Its glorious streak at the cinemas has been cut short due to what Jade Osiberu has described as “issues that are way beyond our control”. She also stated that according to her distributor (Filmone Distribution), the numbers for Sugar Rush were tracking just behind the highest-grossing Nollywood of all time before the film was pulled out of cinemas. So why was it removed from the cinemas in the first place?
Word on the street is that a particular government agency was not happy about how it was portrayed and put pressure on the distributors to have it taken out of the cinemas. This unconfirmed report quickly hit social media and it didn’t take long for the hashtag #BringBackSugarRush to trend. Chika Ichibor, the head of corporate affairs for the National Film and Video Censor Board put out a rather vague statement that didn’t explain why the film got removed in the first place but assured Nigerians that the film will definitely return to the cinemas.
This takes us back to the issue of the film’s removal and the so-called disgruntled government agency that had the film removed in the first place. To address this, I’ll have to get into details of the film so consider this a spoiler alert of sorts.
Mawuli Gavor and Williams Uchemba act as agents of the Economic Financial Crimes Commission who are tasked with recovering stolen funds from the house of a popular businessman. Their mission is to gather as much intel as possible by surveilling the home of this same businessman, a mission which they terribly fail at due to their own incompetence but by some miracle, they obtain video footage of two sisters Sola Sugar (Bisola Aiyeola) and Lola Sugar (Adesua Etomi) leaving the home of this shady businessman with a bag full of money (read 100 dollar bills). Their boss (Omoni Oboli) berates them over their incompetence and they try to soothe her anger by showing her the video of the Sugar sisters leaving the house but they were down on their luck again as the video mysteriously disappeared from the EFCC’s servers. In a much later scene, these same agents illegally abduct the Sugar sisters. This is basically what got EFCC pissed enough to get rid of the movie.
As for the movie itself, it serves up a couple of good laughs backed by a pretty much solid storyline but it still manages to lose its vim in the end, thanks to a few questionable scenes.
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