MOVIE REVIEW: LARA AND THE BEAT

Written by Amarachi Ogbonnaya.

Hi guys, so I finally saw the movie, Lara and the beat and well, here is my review:
A coming of age movie about the young and beautiful Giwa sisters, Lara (Sheyi Shay) and Dara (Somkele Idalama) caught in the center of a financial scandal with their late parents' media empire. The sisters are forced out of their privileged lifestyle, and must learn to build their own future and salvage their family's past.

The production was good, but had some hiccups at the beginning which majorly had to do with continuity; in the second scene, Lara was in the car and was later seen going into the bank, but the bank officials supposedly met her inside the car, that was confusing, you can't be in and out at the same time, that scene was supposed to be redone to perfection since it was an integral part of the movie which couldn't be scrapped, the first scene was a tad bit confusing as Dara called Lara, "Little sis," I later found out, the supposed "second sis" was infact, the elder one, now that was confusing too.

I feel like the story was rushed, the ending particularly, there was no closure, did they get back their parents company or just a part of it? When Lara signed over something to Kemi, their supposed enemy, we didn't know if it was the company or their parents artifacts, that was confusing to me.
Finally, in the club scene, Lara was portrayed as Sheyi Shay, the celebrity, as opposed to the character Lara, hustling to make it in the music industry she was playing when a fan took a picture with her right in front of the movie camera, that particular 'rush' scene was supposed to be cut out.

In all, the movie was beautiful, the visuals were clear and the casts performed excellently well. I like the fact that they used Sheyi Shay, a musician for the lead role, shows we are gradually moving past the era of producing "just any movie" into the era of thinking creatively, at least we know that the voice actually belonged to Lara (Sheyi Shay) as opposed to some other movie where the actors just lip sync and they have people with the actual voice sing in the background.

The scene that really made me laugh was when, the family that took them in, inclusive of Lara and Dara were praying, in supposedly "Mountain of Fire" style and Lara kept saying "Trish die"

What I learnt from the movie:

1. It is when you are in trouble that you know your friends. Lara didn't have true friends, just friends who were exploiting her and it was through their empire crashing that they discovered who was for them and against them.

2. Family tie is important, but when you have a bad one, you are toast.

3. Some people beef the rich, honestly. Some people feel like being poor is the cause of the rich or something like that, so whatever opportunity they get, they want to bring them out. Also, I learnt that, it is only those who low key wants to be like you, that hates you, hate your guts.

4. Finally, some situations happen for you to unlearn, relearn and grow, not all bad events are bad literally. If they don't happen, you won't discover your inner strength and grow. Look at the mishap of the Giwa empire, it happened for the sisters to get out of their comfort zones and rewrite their stories themselves and they came out stronger.

Well done Tosin Coker, you and your production crew did a good job on this one especially the storyline, made me remember, Material Girls (The American Movie).

Release date: July, 20th

Movie casts: Sheyi shey, Vector, Somkele Ihdalama, Kemi Lala Akindoju, Chinedu Ikedieze, Chioma Akpotha, Uche Jombo, etc.

Director: Tosin Coker.