Just as the name suggests, The Wait tells a story of the different seasons of life and how waiting is important to them, mostly using the story of women struggling with childbearing issues.
Dr. Nara is a gynecologist whose experience in the field has opened her up to the hard realities women can face when trying to conceive. This drives her to begin a women’s support group named ‘The Waiting Room’. The story starts on Nara’s birthday when she delivers one of the members of the waiting room of a baby girl but unfortunately, the baby passes almost immediately after birth. In the scene, we are introduced to a plethora of emotions that quickly shift from one extreme to the other. Next, we see her best friend Bayo acknowledging how hard it must be to have a job like hers that mandates one to deliver bad news. Much later in their conversation, Bayo realizes that his wife Tosan who has suffered 5 miscarriages might be depressed. He makes effort to get her to join The Waiting Room but all efforts fail. She is also withdrawn emotionally from him and he soon realizes that she who had prayed for his salvation is now averse to anything related to Jesus and prayer. As time passes, we are introduced to another couple, the Williams who have been married for 10 years but are yet to conceive. Akin, the husband suggests adoption but his wife Nkechi is against the idea. She believes she will have a child of her own and keeps trying to get pregnant. Dr. Nara is not without issues. She is a divorcee and her mother does not spare her the pressure to get married again. Other areas of her life continue to put this in her face as she even gets disrespected at work. Finally, there is the story of Somto who is a fresh first-class architecture graduate and is in search of a job. At the prompting of his friend Essien, he starts a dance school and soon lines fall in pleasant places for him. At the end of this movie, everyone’s story is given a quite pleasant closing and we see the importance of waiting.
The movie was a good one and enjoyable to watch. It had a lot of cute scenes that showed how beautiful relationships and marriages could be. I love how it shows the realities of life and emphasized the importance of having a support group. I like how it ended. There was no rush to bring everyone to a “happy ending”. Nara didn’t remarry, she was ‘waiting’. Nkechi didn’t get pregnant, her lot was to be open to adoption. Aisha and her husband Bayo and his wife gave birth to twins. And Somto got his dream job and set the wheels rolling for his passion-dancing.
Although this movie was good, there were some things that didn’t add up.
Somto’s story seemed out of place. It felt like the writer was trying so hard to merge two stories that had no relationship together. Like why was there a whole ghetto and touts and the other side had couples trying to give birth? I’m not sure what it was meant to give, but it didn’t give it.
Another thing I noticed was that there were some awkward scenes. Like when Bayo first came to the waiting room. The transition that happened from the conversation they were having to when their focus shifted to Bayo was very artificial. There was also when Nara went home, her sister kept giving her uneasy looks like they had had a bad past yet nothing was done with that. The audience is left to wonder why that was even done at all.
And there’s this one that may never forgive. In the first scene where a baby was delivered, I was very impressed that they got a baby almost the size of a newborn, and the makeup made everything look so realistic, but when they showed us Bayo’s twins at the end, I got confused. How could they be so big one year later when their mother was not even pregnant with them before then? If Tosan wasn’t pregnant before we were taken to one year into the future, that means she got pregnant and gave birth within the space of a year, so they should be three months old. This should be correct because it was their dedication scene that we were shown and in Nigeria, dedication happens after three months. So how could three months old babies be so big and even bigger than the baby the Williams adopted months before their supposed birth? That just did not add up.
Outside of this, I’ll reiterate that this was an enjoyable watch.
Thank you for reading again today, till next time, bye!
