Yvonne Nelson's movie, House of Gold that stars Nigerian artistes Omawunmi and Ice Prince, alongside Ghanaian Majid Michel, Eddie Watson amongst others premiered in July in Lagos. Despite the razzmatazz around the premiere, the general impression is that it is a movie of many stars and little shine.
Yvonne Nelson, the Ghanaian actress most famous for being a recurring decimal on pop act Iyanya's ridiculous hit single Your Waist for some time now hasn't been content with just being the flavour of the month. She may rock those bikini photo shoots like no other, but she also proves she has a head for business, following last year's Single & Married and now, House of Gold.
The film has an ensemble of Ghanaian-Nigerian stars like Yvonne and Majid Michel as scions of a wealthy family returning from far flung locations on their dying father's request to familiarise themselves with their other siblings.
The father, Mr. Dab Ansah Williams was prolific at bedding and impregnating all kinds of women. But siring children and raising them right are two different things.
After hearing tragic news of his affliction with cancer and with the help of his long time associate and legal representative, Williams embarks on a mission to call his children home –most of whom were born out of wedlock and various illicit affairs.
The re-union proves a little more than everyone bargained for as each child returns with an agenda, setting the stage for the most bizarre seven days of their lives. He forces them to spend one week in his Ghanaian mansion in a poorly conceived attempt at rekindling some kind of bond with each other.
It turns out to be an epic failure of course –both Papa Williams' last ditch attempt and Yvonne's House of Gold experiment. If you think the storyline is familiar, it is probably because you have seen such mind numbing storyline before; the latest being the Desmond Elliott-directed In the cupboard. It is quite understandable when there is an unsuccessful attempt to remake a good film, but an unsuccessful bid to ape one which should not have existed in the first place is truly befuddling.
The plot is repetitive, scripting is wishy-washy, characters come and go in a blur and nothing here is particularly memorable, not even in a bad way. Aside from Francis Odega's hardworking turn as the comic foil, everyone is terrible.
Majid has had his own share of bad movies; so, it is no surprise to see him slum it out here. His attempts at bringing some sort of credibility to the scene are thwarted by the incredibly unromantic and unbelievable affair which he is asked to carry out.
To be honest though, even Denzel Washington would be defeated by some of the lines Majid was saddled with. But then, Denzel Washington would never touch this script with a 20-foot pole.
Yvonne casts herself in her routine intercoursey bombshell role and flaunts her figure to good effect, but she cannot act to save a soul. Recognising this, she didn't even attempt to do anything apart from bringing on the intercoursey.
Nigerian singer Omawumi plays Yvonne's foe and the bane of her existence. Both sisters have been locked in a bitter rivalry dating back to their childhood. Omawumi is in possession of Yvonne's 'medicine' and watching her administer it at any chance she gets proves to be the only reason to be interested in this subplot.
Omawumi is as brash and loud as her public persona, but comes across as one of the least offenders here. She brings along her apprentice Mercy Chinwo whose express aim seems to be to make Majid look bad.
Ice Prince makes a cringeworthy cameo appearance and everyone else is as bad as the next person. I could go on and count the ways in which 'House of gold' is terrible, but that would be unfair when I could just be succinct and say that it is a bad movie.
Yvonne Nelson and her 'smoking hot' body rocks, but maybe things like filmmaking should be left to the discretion of the masters; for the love of all that is good in film.
Okiche is a writer, movie buff and music critic. Culled from ynaija.com.
Source: Film: Can't save this house from sinking (http://nationalmirroronline.net/new/film-cant-save-this-house-from-sinking/)