Call of My Life review: A rom-com that earns its clichés… mostly

Cheesy, melodramatic, dripping in mise-en-scène, Call of My Life delivers everything you'd expect from a rom-com of its nature. It throws you into the world of two hopeless romantics who see everything through rose-coloured glasses and nothing more. 

At first, it tries to hand you a slice of reality, but quickly abandons that in favour of a full fairytale, a shift that would work better if the film didn't keep reminding you that you're watching one.

At its centre is Soluchi, a romantic already tethered to Kalu, who is the kind of man many Nigerians know well. Kalu is focused on providing, not a fan of so much affection, and dependable in a way that slowly stops being enough. 

He is not a villain, and the film is smart enough not to write him as one. If you come from a certain kind of upbringing or run with a strong friend group, Kalu will be painfully familiar and probably the optimal choice.

Soluchi, however, wants more, and that wanting sets the story in motion when a customer care call connects her voice to Eli, a man so taken by it that he moves mountains just to meet her.

Unrealistic? Absolutely. But that's the contract a rom-com asks you to sign, and Call of My Life responds to it in earnest. There were frequent coincidences, like meeting at the same restaurant and a mutual friend who turns out to be a coworker, but within the genre, these are features, not bugs.

Where the film is less forgivable is in its pacing. The opening is great, doing the work of grounding you in its characters and the world they inhabit, the ending delivers a climax that earns the wait, but the middle sags. 

Scenes of Soluchi sleeping and waking up felt like filler content, meant to hit a runtime target. It is a missed opportunity. The film had a friend character rich enough to carry those gaps. Cutting away to her life during moments of suspense would have tightened the narrative considerably and given the audience somewhere to breathe without stopping completely.

On characters: they are believable, because most of them are people we already know. Too many Kalus exist in real life. Soluchi's mother is instantly recognisable. Her father, though portrayed a little too agreeable for reality, still lands. Eli is the outlier, but that is perhaps more a reflection of lived experience than a writing failure. 

What the film struggles with is growth. Kalu's arc, the most promising of the lot, collapses into a familiar trope, which is the realisation of what he's lost, and the scramble to reclaim it. It was tried, and it did not land.

The performances, however, are a different conversation. Nkem Owoh is a masterclass in adaptation. Going in, I had reason to wonder whether his style, forged in an entirely different era of Nollywood, would fit here. It does, seamlessly. 

He is funny when the film needs lightness and propulsive when it needs momentum. Patience Ozokwor matches him beat for beat. For the leads, Uzoamaka inhabits Soluchi rather than performs her, a distinction worth noting. Justin Ugonna, in his first screen role, is a genuine surprise. So is Zubby Michael.

Directionally, Call of My Life makes a good choice, stepping outside the Lekki-lit, aspirational aesthetic that defines so much of contemporary Nollywood. The world it builds fits its characters, which sounds simple but is rarer than it should be. The cinematography is one of the film's strengths as each scene is composed to serve the story, not to distract from it.

The dialogue holds for most of the runtime, until the ending arrives. What should have been the emotional peak becomes the film's most uncomfortable moment. Eli is seen reaching for words from what might as well have been a poetry pamphlet, with Soluchi meeting him at the same altitude. 

The intention is clear but the execution is not. Less dialogue, more of the hopeless, wordless longing the film had been building toward, would have served far better.

The score does its job well, being a love song framing for a love story, nothing more complex than that. The Johnny Drille concert, however, is a different matter. It comes without warning or obvious narrative purpose, and carries the faint scent of product placement. It is not damaging, but it is distracting.

VERDICT: Worth watching. Call of My Life is not a perfect film. Its middle drags, leaving some of its best characters underexplored. But it is a genuinely warm, culturally rooted romantic comedy that understands its audience without being condescending to them. That is not nothing. It is, in fact, quite a lot.

PULSE RATING: 7.5/10