By Oparah Goodness.
Movie: Who’s the Boss (2020).
Cast: Funke Akindele, Blossom Chukwujekwu, Sharon Ooja, Ini Dima-Okojie, Segun Arinze, Bolly Lomo, Beverly Osu, Tayo Faniran.
Director/Screen writer: Chinaza Onuzo.
Executive Producers: Chinaza Onuzo.
Zulumoke Oyibo.
Damola Ademola.
Production houses: Inkblot productions/Accelerate studios.
Language: English with Yoruba toppings.
Running time: 1hr45m.
Rating: 13+
SYNOPSIS
An over working and creative assistant’s promotion is sabotaged by her overbearing boss. In the midst of the sad news, a better career opportunity locates her and making her dreams in the advertisement sphere come true.
Who’s the Boss teaches Career development and empowerment.
Every character in the film asides the extra’s we don’t have their stories are career people. I can confidently say this is a Career Drama Film.
Liah is an assistant ad executive in the Apex creative agency. She represents the low life, passionate, hardworking and creative employee who is trying to make ends meet but she’s constantly suppressed by their superiors. In this case, Hauwa is Liah oppressor. She knows how the use her words to talk down on her assistant’s worth. Apparently, Liah overhead her boss sabotaging her promotion to creative director and this breaks Liah down but she being that loyal employee had nothing to say about it because she needs her job to take care of her needs. And of course jobs aren’t easy to get in Nigeria.
Now this is the point where the character Jumoke comes in to play her bestie role, everyone should have a Jumoke kind of friend in thier lives. Jumoke is that smart friend who is always there for her friends, rendering help and support just to see her friends happy. Jumoke is that selfless character in the movie who cares about her friend more than she cares for herself. At her birthday party she books a presentation meeting with a total stranger she met. This is where the story begins, this point Aniya, Liah’s own creative agency came to be.
Liah’s still a staff at Apex while going for presentations for her company was able to pull it off better with the help of her bestie’s bestie, Lekan. Lekan is the talented playboy every girl loves but not Liah. Liah sees him as a notorious play boy and Lekan sees her as the poor scholarship girl from his bestie’s school. They were entirely world’s apart but Aniya brought them close and they get to know themselves and help each other by setting aside their differences and build Aniya.
What seems like a trial became something huge for Liah as her own company becomes an opposition company for the company she is working for. This is the crisis point where she is threatened to be sued for using Apex ideas for her own company Aniya. She questions her worth and battles with the growing love for Lekan whom she hated so much. Lekan on the other hand has fallen in love with Liah and is ever ready to support her dreams but the threat of being sued by a big creative agency as Apex brought her to the crossroads of her career and relationship. Lekan still bearing grudges from his past tech business idea that was bought off from him finds it hard to support Liah’s decision, thus their breakup.
Liah makes it big in the advertisement industry and emerges the winner of the best ad for Access Bank. Liah realizes her win wouldn’t be possible without the help of her friend Lekan, she finds him and apologizes to him.
Lessons to take home from the Film.
1. Do not fall for your bosses verbal abuse. Verbal abuse is one of the many ways employers of labour harness to toture and talk down on their employees and it’s for obvious reasons, they can’t slap their employees. But we know well enough that there are words that sting so deep and make us bleed. Liah was always being abused by Hauwa with words like, ‘you don’t deserve it’. Liah own the other hand would reply ‘of course Hauwa’ with pains in heart and of course she knows she deserves a promotion after working two years as an assistant in Apex. So, never let anyone talk you down on your rights or talk you out of your dreams.
2. This film opens our eyes to the dog eat dog world we live in. People struggle from grass trying to make ends meet and also grow but there are people in the high places leveling them down. Hauwa represents monopoly in the film. She only wants to be the prosperous one in the office and the entire advertisement world. In different scenes of the movie we see her anger and disgust at CEO of the growing Aniya company. Her continuous rants of breaking the company weren’t empty words. She succeeds doing that with the backing of the law.
3. What doesn’t break us makes us strong is another important lesson to pick from the story. Liah went through hell of demotion, verbal abuse and heart break to become an independent woman. This goes to the women especially, we are moved by lots of things going on in our lives and these things cause us to give little or no meaningful output in our career/business. Liah knowing what she wants saw past all these, finally gets what she always dreamed of and finally coming back to Lekan to solve their relationship problems. She’s a lucky girl I think, most men would have seen that as an opportunity to move on to the next girl.
4. If your friends are not supportive and encouraging you in hard times please leave that circle. Liah’s friends were so helpful to her and there’s no way Liah’s success story would be complete if it wasn’t for Jumoke and Lekan, the playboy turned heart throb.
5. Finally, ‘Love conquers all’ is one sentence most people believe. We see that in play in the broken relationship of Lekan and Liah. At the end all that mattered to them was that they would have each other’s back forever.
If you’ve seen the movie what other lessons did it teach you? Drop them in the comment section.
See you next time.
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