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From staging a relationship to fulfill an inheritance clause, posing as a couple to impress the family or boost a public image, the fake dating trope has firmly nestled itself within the romance genre. For a trend that has become a staple of romantic flicks, the finest renditions manage to reinvent and evolve, bringing fresh perspectives to the table. While it does achieve none of these, Reel Love is a love story that plunges viewers into the swirling depths of social media culture, where relationships—like nearly everything else—exist under the relentless gaze of public scrutiny and validation.
With a script by Ife Olujuyigbe and guided by the experienced hand of director Kayode Kasum (Afamefuna), Reel Love unfolds the romantic adventure of Tomide Sage (Timini Egbuson), whose almost perfect world collides with that of Rachel Monday (TJ Omosuku), an unassuming shop assistant. Their story ignites after a heated argument between them captured on video by a nosy bystander goes viral amid harsh criticism and outrage that even force brands to blacklist him. Before this moment, Tomide, a self-proclaimed relationship expert, has meticulously built a picture-perfect online persona of himself for fans who devour his relationship rants. So when that viral video of him clashing with Rachel finds its way to social media, it lands like an embarrassing stain on his pristine digital image.
In a bid for damage control, Tomide’s fiancée, Imani (Atlanta Bridget Johnson), suggests he stage a fake romance with Rachel and broadcast it online—a decision she’d regret in retrospect. Initially, Tomide and Rachel resist the idea, only to relent and dive in. Tomide’s online flock laps it up instantly, and soon, the deals he’d lost trickle back, joined by a flood of new opportunities. For the first few months, the faux couple is swept into a whirlwind of photoshoots and dress-up sessions for the social media spotlight. It’s a dizzying shift for Rachel, unaccustomed to the influencer life of primping under ring lights for strangers-turned-fans. Her friend Chizaram (Bimbo Ademoye) urges her to seize the moment and carve out her own social media identity, one untethered to Tomide’s shadow.
As their time together stretches on, Tomide and Rachel find themselves genuinely savoring this deceptive charade, despite their better judgment. Wrapped in the intoxicating haze of social media validation and their sizzling chemistry, the boundaries between fake and real begin to blur. Even Imani senses Tomide’s growing distance, and as the arrangement she orchestrated slips beyond her grasp, she starts to panic. In a jealous frenzy, she too turns to social media with an announcement of her own.
Through Kayode Kasum’s observant lens, Reel Love captures the fickleness of the social media world with striking clarity, but more notably, it serves as a sharp critique of how social media influences and invades our everyday lives. Tomide’s fans swiftly cancel him over a single outburst, yet they’re just as quick to swallow his staged romance with Rachel. The longer you dwell in this digital world, the deeper you sink beneath its shallow layers of fleeting intelligence—prompting the question: why would Tomide let his life be dictated by such an emotionally capricious crowd? It’s a poignant query Kasum invites us to ponder, turning the mirror inward as we engage with his film.
With a seemingly straightforward narrative, the film unveils our troubling obsession with social media validation, where every moment is caught in a torrent of online frenzy and public judgment. This thread of social commentary weaves seamlessly throughout, illuminating how digital narratives twist and reshape reality. Under Kasum’s thoughtful direction, Reel Love explores the fragile line between real love and the polished, on-screen reel love.
Yet, Reel Love lingers so heavily on its critique of influencer culture’s unhealthy patterns that other promising themes like the root cause of Tomide’s identity and insecurity issues—an absent father, self realization and second chances, for example, suffocate beneath its weight. Subplots like the fraught relationship between Tomide and his estranged father flicker into view only to be abandoned with a hasty reconciliation between both of them. Kasum’s Lagos bursts with vibrant aesthetics, masking the city’s harsher truths, while a soulful soundtrack hums in harmony with the film’s emotional pulse. At the heart of this pulse lies Tomide and Rachel’s shared connection—from their viral clash to being the influencer couple of the year, deepened by the familial struggles they bond over—though their performances lack the quiet intensity expected of rom-com lovers.
The romance genre is a familiar playground for Timini Egbuson, who has slipped often into the heartthrob role in films like Reach (2020), Dinner At My Place (2022), and Big Love (2023) often grappling with betrayal, family tensions or his character’s lover boy antics. Egbuson (self-styled bad boy T) stands out as one of Nollywood’s few male actors whose “lover boy” charm transcends the screen. He wields it with a natural ease—whether you call it fine boy privilege (a debate about whether he outshines Benjamin Touitoui is best saved for another day) or simply one of his fortunate gifts—that never fails to leave his female audience swooning.
Egbuson’s acting isn’t spectacular or memorable in this film, but he carries the film with a steady presence, anchoring it as the familiar “lover boy” lead—a role he knows well. But it’s newcomer TJ Omosuku who delivers an impressive performance even as it is her first big role as lead actress. Her undeniable chemistry with Egbuson lends authentic depth to their attraction. In contrast, Bridget-Johnson’s Imani’s character feels disappointingly flat, lacking the richness needed for a love interest ensnared in a romantic triangle; even her villainous arc feels undercooked and fails to grip. Veteran actresses Funke Akindele and Dakore Egbuson also shine in their supporting character roles.
Though Reel Love doesn’t break new ground in the romance landscape, it fulfills most of the genre’s conventions, buoyed by the compelling chemistry between Egbuson and Omosuku as its romantic core. There are fleeting moments when Tomide gazes at Rachel with a quiet yearning—moments that reveal why she’d pause for this stranger, how they coax out each other’s finest qualities, and why their journey, however predictable, keeps us hooked until the end.
Nollywood teems with lots of romantic comedies, yet only a handful rise above the fray of tired tropes and jarring clichés—some boldly striving to be ambitious (even cliché and ambitious are fast becoming a cliché in film reviews). Reel Love does not aspire for grandeur (it’d have been ridiculous to, given its unimaginative premise); it simply aims to tell a love story in the most relatable, unassuming way it knows whilst striving to charm us without seeming to do so. Far from being perfect, it remains a mindless, fun watch nonetheless.
Reel Love premiered in cinemas February 14.
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Side Musings
- It was a good decision to not cast Bimbo Ademoye as Timini Egbuson’s love interest in this film. It made it not feel YouTube-ish, if there’s a word like that.
- “How are you sure she’s not trying to use you?” asked Imani and it turns out Aunty Imani was the one who ended up being used.
- Tomide is so used to attention from his online fans that he expected the same treatment when he visited Rachel’s place.
