It is an axiom that talent is never enough. That is why it is often said that talent may open the door, but it is discipline, sometimes even temperament, that keeps you in the room. When RCK Records drops Evi (Osas Okonyon), a rising singer just beginning to etch her name into the Nigerian music scene, the decision is as much a consequence of the label’s bankruptcy as it is of Evi’s abrasive personality. She is rude, casually, consistently, and often without provocation, even to the very fans who adore her. So when she loses almost everything, from her record deal to her apartment and car, the fall feels inevitable. What follows is a fragile yet resilient attempt at rebuilding herself, with the help of her loyal friend Onome (Omowunmi Dada), a waitress at a lounge, who offers to be her last refuge.
It is in this phase of loss that the film begins to probe Evi’s resilience. Stripped of comfort and status, she is forced into a quieter, more humbling existence, squatting with Onome and confronting the consequences of her choices. The narrative carefully unpacks its deeper concerns here: betrayal from Evi’s friends eager to exploit her vulnerability, and a more systemic failure embodied in the bankruptcy of RCK Records. What is striking here is the film’s restraint. It begins to resist the urge to sermonise, as is common with most Nollywood movies. Instead, it allows these lessons to breathe naturally within the story, trusting the audience to draw its own conclusions.
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And there is much to draw from. The idea that talent alone is not enough is refracted through multiple characters. For Dayo (Ibrahim Suleiman), it manifests as an inferiority complex masked by bravado. Though I must say I never found Dayo to be a talented singer in the movie. For Mr Kola (Uzor Arukwe), it is a life corroded by gambling and alcohol, self-sabotage dressed as indulgence. For Evi, it is her unchecked arrogance. In this way, the film situates failure not as a singular event but as a pattern of personal and structural flaws. It becomes a story about second chances, how they appear, how they are mishandled, and how easily they can be squandered.
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Yet, for all its thematic ambition, the film occasionally leans too heavily on convenience. The subplot, though engaging, sometimes feels mechanically assembled. Characters like Dayo, the narcissistic singer, and Mr Kola, the falling industry starmaker, are introduced with promise, but their convergence at a lounge raises questions the film does not quite answer. The lounge functions as a central hub, yet it lacks the narrative weight to justify its importance. Is it a cultural hotspot? A hidden gem? The film leaves this ambiguous. Without a clearer sense of its background, where these characters come from, how far they travel, and why this particular space draws them together, the world of the film feels slightly compressed, almost artificially so.
This sense of contrivance extends to smaller moments as well. For instance, when Evi reaches out to friends for financial help, the sudden disconnection of calls immediately after she mentions a specific amount feels too deliberate, too patterned to be entirely believable. Real life rarely arranges itself with such symmetry, and moments like this briefly disrupt the film’s otherwise grounded tone.
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Where Evi truly distinguishes itself, however, is in its use of music. Nollywood has had a long, uneven relationship with musicals, from stage-influenced productions shaped by Yoruba travelling theatre traditions to later films like The Campus Queen (2004) and Make a Move (2014), where performance often overshadowed storytelling. More recent attempts, such as Obara’M (2022), have tried to tie music more closely to character and emotion, but even then, the songs can feel like additions rather than something the story cannot do without. This has been the recurring challenge: musicals in Nollywood tend to entertain, but they do not always carry the narrative weight they should, and that is precisely where Evi stands out. It treats music as part of the story itself, not as decoration, and more importantly, it grounds its musical identity in Afrobeats, giving it a cultural immediacy that many earlier Nollywood musicals lacked.
In doing so, Evi introduces a new Nollywood musical tradition. Here, music is not an accessory; it is the film’s emotional spine. The musical sequences are not interruptions but extensions of character and mood. When Evi sings after her rejection by Starz Records, or during her fraught collaboration with Dayo, the performances carry the weight that dialogue alone cannot express. Her voice becomes a site of vulnerability, pain, and quiet defiance. Even moments of betrayal, such as the realisation that her creative contributions have been appropriated, are deepened through song rather than explained away.
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This is where the film finds its most authentic rhythm, in the fusion of storytelling and sound. The transitions feel earned, the lyrics purposeful, and the performances emotionally anchored. It is a rare instance in Nollywood where the musical form does not feel borrowed but fully inhabited.
The casting further reinforces this sense of authenticity. Osas Okonyon embodies Evi with a convincing mix of fragility and defiance, making her flaws as visible as her strengths. It is a performance that does not ask for sympathy but gradually earns it. Credit must go to writer-director Uyoyou Adia for this choice. It is a casting decision that shapes the entire film.
The supporting cast adds life to the story. Uzor Arukwe’s Kola is particularly compelling, a man who once held the power to make stars yet never became one himself, now reduced to chasing illusions at the bottom of a bottle. Ariyiike ‘Dimples’ Owolagba as Eloho, El for short, Michael Ejoor as Kome, and Joseph ‘JayOnAir’ Onaolapo as Mike all bring a lived-in quality to their roles, while Omowunmi Dada’s Onome provides the film with its emotional grounding, a quiet, steady presence against Evi’s mood swings. Even the brief appearance of Femi Branch gives some weight to the cast, reminding the audience of the industry’s bigger names.
In the end, Evi is not without its drawbacks. Its reliance on coincidence occasionally weakens its realism, and its sense of place could be more deliberate. But its strengths, particularly its musical storytelling and its refusal to reduce its themes to simple moral lessons, make it a noteworthy entry in Nollywood’s evolving relationship with the musical form. It understands that music, like talent, is only powerful when it is anchored in something deeper.
