Film review: Yvonne Nelson and Majid Michel cannot save this ‘House of Gold’ from sinking

by Wilfred Okiche

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Yvonne Nelson, the Ghanaian actress most famous for being a recurring decimal on pop act Iyanya’s ridiculous hit single ‘Your waist’ for some time now hasn’t been content with just being the flavour of the month. She may rock those bikini photo shoots like no other but she also proves she has a head for business, following last year’s ‘Single & married’ with ‘House of gold’.

The Ghanaian-Nigerian ensemble stars Miss Nelson herself and Majid Michel as scions of a wealthy family returning from far flung locations on their dying father’s request to familiarise themselves with their other siblings. See Mr Dab Ansah Williams was quite prolific at bedding and impregnating all kinds of women. But siring children and raising them right are two different things so after hearing tragic news of his affliction with cancer, he assembles his whole brood (or as many of them as he is aware of) and forces them to spend one week in his Ghanaian mansion in a poorly conceived attempt at rekindling some kind of bond with each other.

Both turn out to be epic failures of course. Both Papa Williams’ last ditch attempt and Miss Nelson’s ultimate ‘Hose of gold’ experiment. If you think the story line is familiar, it is probably because you have seen such mind numbing crap before, the latest being the Desmond Elliott directed disaster ‘In the cupboard’. It is quite understandable when there is an unsuccessful attempt to remake a good film but an unsuccessful bid to ape one which should not have existed in the first place is truly befuddling.

The plot is repetitive, scripting is wishy washy, characters come and go in a disastrous blur and nothing here is particularly memorable, not even in a bad way. Aside from Francis Odega’s hardworking turn as the comic foil, everyone is terrible.

Majid Michel has had his own share of bad movies so it is no surprise to see him slum it out here. His attempts at bringing some sort of credibility to the scene are thwarted by the incredibly unromantic and unbelievable affair which he is asked to carry. To be honest though, even Denzel Washington would be defeated by some of the lines Mr Michel was saddled with but then Mr Washington would never touch this script with a 20 feet pole.

Yvonne Nelson casts herself in her routine sex bomb role and flaunts her hot figure to good effect but she cannot act to save a soul and recognising this, she doesn’t even attempt to do anything apart from bring on the sexy.

Singer Omawumi plays Miss Nelson’s foil and the bane of her existence. Both sisters have been locked in a bitter rivalry dating back to their childhood days and while Omawumi is in possession of Miss Nelson’s medicine, watching her administer it at any chance she gets proves to be the only reason to be interested in their own sub plot. Omawumi is as brash and loud as her public persona but comes across as one of the least offenders here. She brings along her apprentice Mercy Chinwo whose express aim seems to be to make Majid Michael look bad, Ice Prince makes a cringe-worthy cameo appearance and everyone else is as bad as the next person. We could go on and count the ways in which ‘House of gold’ is terrible but that would be unfair when we could just limit ourselves and say that it is a bad movie.

Yvonne Nelson, we love you (and that smoking body of yours) but just stop already. For the love of all that is good in film, please stop.

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