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It was tempting to watch and see what ‘The Perfect Church’ had to offer that Nollywood had not served up a million times before.

The religious
satire from Wale Adenuga Productions is a screen adaptation of Ebi
Akpeti’s novel of the same title. Unusually for a Nollywood picture,
The Perfect Church lampoons, albeit not too hard, but the difference
from the rest of the pack is clear. Cheating husbands, homosexuals,
‘carnal believers’ and desperate singles are some of the awkward
vehicles moving the story’s plot.

Perfect by Name

The movie, directed
by Bambo Adebajo, opens aptly during Sunday service. A choir session is
ongoing in Pastor Benson’s ‘The Perfect Church’. Ramsey Nouah is
fitting in his role as Benson, shepherd of the perfect flock. It is not
the first time Nouah will be playing a pastor, though. He played a
similar role in ‘Church Business’, another religious satire from 2003.

Leading praise and
worship with the ‘voice of an angel’ is Sister Angela, played by Funke
Akindele, a senator’s mistress. The pastor’s sermon on marriage is a
winner with the congregation and they rush to gush to the pastor about
how moving it is: the congregation is in awe of its pastor and the
pastor is proud of his followers.

Alas, the key
players in the church’s activities are living a lie. Things in the
Church are not exactly as they seem. We are soon introduced to the
‘who’s who of what’s what’ in The Perfect Church.

Mr and Mrs. Ojo are
the church’s perfect couple, superbly portrayed by Hakeem Rahman and
Ngozi Ezeonu. Pastor Benson cites them as examples of what a perfect
marriage should be and hopes the rest of the church will emulate their
‘exemplary’ union.

Norbert Young is
Mrs Ojo’s former husband, who brings back good and bad memories. Jibola
Daboh is the distinguished Senator Val, lover to Sister Angela. Despite
having only a cameo appearance, Val is not easily forgotten and in a
movie filled with very bad men, Daboh joins Rahman as its
super-villains.

The church’s head
usher, anxious to marry above his status, soon dips his hands into the
money box, much like Judas Iscariot before him. Needless to say, the
Pastor did feel betrayed. Same for Yinka Olukunga in her role as the
devoted, desperate church sister eager to become Pastor Mrs. Benson.
She indulges in unsolicited ‘cooler’ ministry and has the courage to
propose to the Pastor after she is convinced that reception was loud
and clear when her prayers revealed she would be the handsome
preacher’s life partner. Benson, however, has other interests.

Imperfect by Nature

The
much-anticipated visit by Bishop Williams is the catalyst for the
unfurling and the collapse of the sandcastle that is the Perfect
Church. Acted excellently by Olu Jacobs, it is hard not to fall under
the spell of the Bishop, who soon has all and sundry confessing to
myriad sins. It is during his altar call that we see that there are
more sinners than previously believed. It was easier to have simply
said ‘Go and sin no more’ to the residents of this contemporary Sodom
and Gomorrah.

The picture ends
happily for some; two go to jail for attempted murder and one to hell
for suicide. On its part, the audience is acquainted with a narrator we
never knew existed. She obliges us – as she does the visiting students
from a private secondary school – with an epilogue on the Perfect
Church Saga. There is hope that a change in the church’s name will
herald a change in its nature.

The Perfect Church
is not the perfect movie. In its search for complexity, there are too
many flashbacks rather than authentic twists and revelations that could
task the audience’s imagination. The hints to the pastor’s darker side
are merely glossed over and we don’t feel the punch or essence of this
until the climactic moment of disclosure. The emphasis appears more on
the flock than on the shepherd and at the end, the pastor’s misfortune
seems not to matter so much. Not even to his flock whose awe swiftly
turns to disgust.

His comeuppance at
the end of the movie is also unrealistic and more of a cowardly act. In
fact, the unexpected suggestion by a child in the audience to ‘Kill all
of them; just kill them’ sounded like a more logical option than the
pastor’s eventual choice.

No Part Two

‘The Perfect
Church’ does not draw a clear line for itself between a satire and a
moralist play or a Greek tragedy. At some points, it preaches
forgiveness and also mocks the same; it hails courage but then takes
the easy way out; it satirises and also pampers.

The subtitles were sometimes faulty and some of the grammatical howlers strike you in the face like a bad day in history.

The movie however
makes up for its flaws with humorous lines and action. Beneath the
humour also lies a pointer to the thought that, in reality, no perfect
flock exists and the lesson that sin does not pay.

Even though it seemed like another episode of Super Story, there is
no promise of a sequel. See it if you love Nollywood; see it if you
hate Nollywood.