Once upon a time, I recapped an insane Christian book that claimed the devil created football as a tool to destroy humanity. The article’s popularity made me turn my recaps into a weekly series named “So You Don’t Have To“, where I find batshit crazy pieces of media (books, movies, etc) and recap them for your pleasure.
Today I will be recapping the controversial 2010 direct-to-video Nollywood movie titled, ‘Men In Love’.
“The film tells a story of how a couple experiencing troubles in their marriage had their situation worsened when a cursed homosexual friend visits them.” –
– The Film’s Wikipedia page
I found out about this movie for the first time in April 2020 when my babe sent me a fucking hilarious clip from it on Instagram. I scoured countless DVD shops looking for a copy so I could recap it for this series but the movie is ten years old and the DVD shop attendants either didn’t have it or didn’t know about it at all.
I felt hella stupid when it finally occurred to me to check YouTube TWO MONTHS after my search began.
Your boy is ageing. 😔
Let’s get into the movie:
The movie starts with a shot of Whitney (Tonto Dike) driving angrily in an overwhelming wig and glasses combo.
She arrives at a hotel and tells the receptionist that she’s a runs girl there to see and sleep with a man named Charles for $1000. The receptionist first denies that the hotel currently has an occupant with that name but confesses when Whitney subtly threatens to get her fired. Whitney goes up to the room, opens the door, and sees Charles (John Dumelo) about to bump genitals with another woman. That’s when it’s revealed that Charles and Whitney are a married couple.
After being caught by his wife, pants down, about to eat another woman’s snail, the first thing that comes out of Charles’ mouth is:
This understandably pissses Whitney off. She beats the shit out of Charles and stabs the secretary with a broken champagne bottle before storming out. When she confronts him for being a cheating bastard later that night, he gaslights her by saying:
When that doesn’t work, he buys a car thinking that’ll make her forget everything but it doesn’t work and she calls him out on his shitty M.O of buying her expensive shit whenever she catches him cheating. After a few days of not speaking to each other (you can tell time has passed because there’s a montage of Whitney weeping over her wedding album in different outfits), Charles has a change of heart and begs her to give him one more chance. She accepts and everything is peachy for a while.
Until Charles rekindles his friendship with an old university mate named Alex (Muna Obiekwe).
Charles first runs into Alex at work. Charles can’t remember him at first but does after Alex jogs his memory. They run into each other again while on vacation with Whitney at some nameless resort and Alex, who ends up being the manager, walks in on them about to have sex on a pool table IN A PUBLIC AREA.
On that same trip, Charles and Whitney get into a fight and she locks him out of their room in anger. Alex helps calm Whitney down and this makes them closer . While having lunch together one day, Alex reveals that he’s gay. Charles initially has no problem with it until Alex starts hitting on him.
Charles turns down Alex’s advances and Alex falls into depression while 2 of his gay friends try to make him feel better.
They tell him to stop stressing over a straight man but he says can’t stop, won’t stop because he’s loved Charles since they were in university together. He invites Charles to his birthday party, drugs him, and rapes him.
Charles wakes up the next morning and, because of the pain he feels in his butt, realises what has happened. He punches Alex in the face and leaves. One of Alex’s friends tells him that Charles might call the police but Alex confidently says that he’s taken steps to ensure that won’t happen. The friend, who we initially think is the voice of reason, says this:
They laugh about the rape some more while drinking wine.
A few days later, Charles returns to see Alex. He apologises for the punch, says the rape opened his eyes, and begs Alex to date and MOVE IN with him. He even buys Alex a freaking car! They tell Whitney that Alex’s place is being renovated so he needs a place to stay for a while. She initially isn’t fine with the idea but eventually warms up to it when she finds out Alex is a good cook.
One night, Charles and Alex are having dinner at a restaurant in matching shirts when Alex’s ex-boyfriend comes in and throws the biggest hissy fit I have ever seen.
This is my favourite scene in the entire movie. Let me tell you why. You see, when Charles and Alex walk in, holding hands and kissing LIKE THEY DON’T LIVE IN WILDLY HOMOPHOBIC NIGERIA, Whitney’s friend, Rina, is already in the restaurant. When she sees them sucking each other’s lips, she’s like:
And then when Alex’s ex-boyfriend starts making a scene, she gives us LEGENDARY reaction shots. Check them:
After the ex-boyfriend is thrown out by security, the camera pans to her one last time and she’s like:
And the entire time she’s onscreen I’m like:
STAT!
For whatever reason, Rina doesn’t want to be the one to tell Whitney what’s going on so all she does is tell her to not get comfortable having Alex around. Things escalate when Charles and Whitney throw a party and she asks that they dress in matching outfits but he refuses then shows up at the party wearing matching outfits with Alex. Seeing Whitney’s confusion, Rina reveals what she saw at the restaurant that night and Whitney passes out.
There’s a weird scene where Whitney and Alex fight over who’s going to keep cooking Charles’ food. Then Whitney goes to see Charles at his office one day and finds him having sex with Alex in a toilet.
Whatever sha.
Whitney returns home and starts packing her things so she can leave. Charles walks in not long after, belt still unbuckled from his office quickie, and attempts to say some shit but she smacks him upside the head and leaves.
She goes to a church and cries for 5 days straight at the altar before the pastor shows up to ask what the hell her problem is.
Pastor Mrs Mike says the holy spirit revealed to her that Charles is under a demonic gay spell. Whitney begs her to help so they hold hands and start speaking in tongues.
This gives Whitney the strength to get her man back. She has the police arrest Alex for homosexuality. Then she brings in Pastor Mrs Mike & her prayer squad to spiritually throw down in their house so Charles will be free from the gay spell.
Charles is at work when he suddenly goes…
…comes to his senses…
…and rushes home.
Meanwhile, their son is stuck in the middle of a violent prayer session he knows nothing about and looks confused as hell.
When Charles gets home and is told by Pastor Mrs Mike that his foray into homosexuality was the result of a spell, he says:
Then they all hug and the movie ends.
No one bothers to explain anything to their son.
Me after watching this:
