BEHIND THE SCENES
BEHIND THE SCENES: Another Shoddy Bland Movie Promoted By PR
It’s an open secret that Funke Akindele is big on PR, and a Funke Akindele movie is sure going to be all over your face on social media till you’re forced to go see it, now once you get into the cinema, you are left alone outside all the social media hype, to then see for yourself what you paid for to watch. I paid for the ticket to go see Behind The Scenes, and let’s just say half-way, while the movie was on, I was already mentally focused on things I needed to do after leaving the cinema.
‘Behind The Scenes’ is a movie directed by Funke Akindele and Tunde Olaoye, starring top Nollywood actors such as Destiny Etiko, Funke Akindele, Ibrahim Chatta, Inidinma Okjie, Iyabo Ojo, Tobi Bakre, Uzor Arukwe, and Victoria Adeleye, among others.
In this movie, Aderonke is a wealthy real estate mogul and the only successful child of three siblings whose parents are dead. She has been carrying the responsibility of her irresponsible elder sister and younger brother, who keep exploiting her. Unfortunately for me as a viewer, the directors of the movie decided to make Aderonke fake her death to discover that her siblings only cared about her money. She set up cameras all over her house, which her elder sister moved into after her supposed death. And from an undisclosed location, she viewed how her sister sold all her vehicles and maltreated her children. And because of this action of hers, she realised she was loving the wrong people.
This movie exaggerated certain things to make a point that Aderonke was generous. An example was her paying the five months’ salary owed to workers of his friend’s company. Who does that? Not even Santa Claus. It was also annoying to me that the director had to make Adewale and Segi, including their daughter, very rude to Aderonke’s domestic staff. The rudeness was just too over-the-top, even beyond what happens in movies, all to prove that they only cared about Aderonke’s money.
Again, I have to talk about the camera setup. Was it that Aderonke was so blind to her siblings’ exploitation that she had to set up cameras to see it? Was it going to be clearer on camera than she had been seeing for decades?
In the end, Behind The Scenes never truly goes behind any scenes. It continues Funke’s didactic work within the same traditional framework inherited from Yoruba theatre storytellers, but without refining the aspects required to translate to the big screen. The film seems like a failed clone of a better film that could have addressed familiar financial family dynamics. Instead, it dresses this clone with elements that are in constant friction: characters with fake jobs more interested in stereotypes and forced humour, a relatable story clogged by forced moral lessons and an intrusive Knorr and Colgate ad in the name of product placement.
The movie stars Funke Akindele, lyabo Ojo, Scarlet Gomez, Uzor Arukwe, Tobi Bakre, Ibrahim Chatta, Destiny Etiko, Uche Montana, Adebayo ‘Mr Macaroni’ Adebowale, Fausat Balogun, Ejiro Onajaife, Ini-Dima Okojie, Handi Danbaki, Wanni Danbaki, Afeez Oyetoro, Dele Odule, Akinola Ayoola Kamo.
The movie was released on December 12, 2025
From All Of Us At Real Nollywood, we rate the movie a 51%
