Movie review: ‘A Father’s Love’ has a good plot twist you won’t see coming

A Father’s Love tells the story of a Lagos taxi driver, David Nwachukwu, who struggles to provide for his wife, twin daughters and sickle cell son. As if his responsibilities are not much, he brings home a baby he found abandoned inside his taxi, leading to a discovery that leaves him depressed.

The movie stars Yvonne Jegede, David Jones David, Chibuna ‘Funnybone’ Stanley, and Uche Jombo, among others. Sebastian Ukwa directed it.

One thing I like about the story is how the plot leads David to discover that the children under his roof are not his biological children. While much of the initial part of the movie kept viewers fixated on the abandoned baby that David found, the revelation of the paternity of the other children under his roof came as a surprise no one saw coming. I thought that was brilliant.

A Father’s Love, however, has some faults in that it makes paternity fraud seem like something a woman can get away with, even though I don’t think that is the intention of the movie producers.

To explain better, David met Ladi while she was still engaged to someone else. She, however, left the person to get married to David, whom she loved. Unfortunately, she was already pregnant with her ex by the time she got married to David, a pregnancy that resulted in twin girls.

Ladi knew the twins she was carrying didn’t belong to David, yet she allowed him to father the children with the mind that they were his offspring. If the hospital had not revealed that David is not the biological father of the sickle cell son, Ladi would have continued to keep their children’s true paternity a secret. That’s fraud. She also defrauded the biological fathers of the children by not letting them know of the pregnancy. That’s triple fraud.

Anyway, the cinematography of this movie is nothing extraordinary but good. I like the lighting of the night scenes as the dark parts were well-maintained while the lighted parts looked like they were from the practical lights in the room. However, I wasn’t impressed with the warm and yellowish tint in the colour grading of the outdoor daylight scenes.

The acting in A Father’s Love is below par. David always had this expression that made him look like a weakling. Being a good and loving father doesn’t mean you have to look like a dummy. As for Yvonne Jegede, she couldn’t nail the wife of a poor man’s look. Her acting wasn’t convincing. The best acting was displayed by Uche Jombo even though she only appeared in two scenes.

A Father’s Love scores well when it comes to dialogue. This is experienced in the scene where David is at a radio station with the baby he finds. The interaction between him, the radio OAP, and the callers is engaging.

I’ll give this movie 5/10 because it is not something I would recommend for a masculine man. Any man who decides to imbibe some of David’s attitude and practice it in real life will have himself to blame. That behaviour is only good in movies.