By NollywoodTimes.com Staff Writer | December 5, 2025 | #Nollywood2025
If you've ever laughed until your ribs ached at a couple's wild money schemes gone wrong, PLUS and MINUS is your next obsession. This 2025 Nollywood gem from Nolly MovieRoom (Dec 3 release, ~1:42:50 runtime) stars Ekene Umenwa as the fiery Agnes and Stephen Odimgbe as the bumbling Paulinus, with KizMary Okolo and Jane Obi stealing scenes left and right. Picture rice-selling rivalries, a "four-layer tummy" eating contest disaster, and a wedding meltdown over 5,000 naira envelopes – pure Naija comedy gold! Rated 8.5/10, it's a must-watch for fans of relatable poverty hustles, juju tropes, and marital madness. Why does it slap so hard? The transcript reveals non-stop laughs amid sharp social satire on greed and village life. Stream it on YouTube now – your sides won't survive!
This film, starring powerhouse talents like Ekene Umenwa, Stephen Odimgbe, Kizmary Okolo, and Jane Obi, has generated enormous buzz, not just for its plot twists but for its unflinching look at deeply ingrained cultural anxieties. As a critic, I went in anticipating the usual tropes, but what I found was a narrative that, while sometimes messy, delivers a punch that few recent Nollywood offerings have managed to land.
1. Synopsis and Initial Impression (The Hook)
"PLUS and MINUS" centers on Polynus (Stephen Odimgbe), a modest rice seller struggling to make ends meet and marry his devoted fiancée, Agnes (Ekene Umenwa). His business is constantly undercut by his jealous and increasingly desperate rival, Chama (Kizmary Okolo), who resorts to dark spiritual means (juju) to steal his customers—a stark portrayal of the cutthroat world of local commerce.
Polynus’s desperation leads him to an eating competition to secure his wedding funds, which results in a near-fatal choking incident and subsequent hospitalization. This crisis provides the perfect entry point for his wealthy, scorned ex-lover, Fina (Jane Obi), who reappears, dangling ₦12 million as a direct cash offer to Agnes to simply walk away from her fiancé. The narrative quickly escalates from a story of honest hustlers to a complex negotiation of values, culminating in a spectacularly dramatic, rule-laden village wedding and a divine intervention of sudden, mind-boggling wealth.
Initial Impression: The film is an immediate adrenaline shot. It moves with a frenetic energy that captures the relentless pace of life in a busy Nigerian market and community. While the early scenes feel a little over-the-top in their physical comedy and shouting matches, the central dramatic pivot—Polynus’s hospitalization and Fina's return—is compelling. The story effectively raises the central question: when you are at your lowest, how much is your integrity, your commitment, and your love truly worth? The initial reaction is one of simultaneous frustration at the characters' poor choices and fascination with the sheer audacity of the plot's scale.
2. Character & Performance Analysis (The Talent)
The film leans heavily on the exaggerated, yet deeply felt, performances typical of contemporary Nollywood, and the main cast delivers the required volatility.
The Power Duo: Polynus and Agnes (Stephen Odimgbe & Ekene Umenwa)
Stephen Odimgbe (Polynus) masterfully oscillates between the put-upon, earnest hustler and the suddenly arrogant, entitled groom. His portrayal of financial desperation is palpable; his sunken face and constant anxiety ground the first act. His sudden, aggressive shift in demeanor upon surviving the competition—a shift that reveals his deeper, perhaps latent, greed—is a jarring but necessary piece of his flawed character arc.
Ekene Umenwa (Agnes) is the emotional anchor. Her chemistry with Odimgbe as Polynus and Agnes is founded on shared hardship, a bond built less on soft romance and more on the grind. Their relationship feels authentic in its transactional necessity—they are partners in poverty. Umenwa shines when she confronts the wedding planner and later, the Chief, exhibiting a fierce, protective ambition that borders on self-sabotage. She embodies the "ride-or-die" partner, but one whose priorities are rapidly corrupted by her circumstances.
The Love Scorned: Fina (Jane Obi)
Jane Obi’s Fina is arguably the most complex character. She represents the ultimate temptation: a seemingly clean, glamorous escape from the "plus and minus" of village life. Obi plays Fina with a calculated, almost icy detachment, masking deep, wounded possessiveness. Her dynamic with Polynus is loaded with history and regret, creating undeniable on-screen tension. Unlike Agnes’s earthy, loud loyalty, Fina offers a polished, effortless existence. Her attempts to buy Agnes off (a staggering ₦12 million) highlight a belief that every human emotion has a market price—a fascinating indictment of modern materialistic values. The performance ensures that Fina is not a mere villain, but a tragic figure whose immense wealth only amplifies her emotional deficits.
The Comic Villain: Chama (Kizmary Okolo)
Kizmary Okolo, as Chama, provides much of the film’s early comic relief, but her descent into juju usage for business gain darkens quickly. Her portrayal is raw and frenetic, successfully embodying the market woman driven mad by failure. This character is crucial for exploring the theme of spiritual quick fixes in commerce, even though her arc is arguably the least subtle.
3. Technical and Artistic Merit (The Craft)
The film's technical proficiency is a mixed bag, prioritizing dialogue and performance over sophisticated cinematic execution, which is common in films aimed at rapid-fire cultural virality.
Cinematography and Lighting: The cinematography is functional rather than artistic. Establishing shots of the market are clear, but the interior lighting, especially in the hospital and Polynus's home, is often flat. There is a noticeable reliance on close-ups to capture the actors’ high-intensity, physical performances.
Editing and Pacing: Pacing is the film's greatest technical challenge. The first act is highly energized, cutting quickly between market squabbles and the eating competition, giving the film a propulsive, almost breathless rhythm. However, the lengthy, repetitive arguments in the third act—particularly the multiple confrontations with the event planner—drag the runtime unnecessarily. A tighter edit, removing some of the superfluous back-and-forth, would have significantly enhanced the overall tension and dramatic impact.
Sound Design: Dialogue clarity is generally strong, which is vital given the heavy reliance on Pidgin English and regional dialects to establish the setting's authenticity. However, the background scoring, while effective in signaling mood shifts, is often heavy-handed, overtly cueing the audience on when to feel tension or humor, instead of allowing the actors' expressions to do the work.
Production Design: The production design is highly effective in establishing the film’s core contrast. The market, the modest home of Polynus, and the community hospital all feel appropriately gritty and authentic. This mundane realism serves as a perfect foil for the opulence of Fina’s world and the ridiculous grandiosity of the over-the-top wedding setup, making the thematic juxtaposition between poverty and wealth sharp and immediate.
4. Themes and Cultural Relevance (The Message)
The richness of "PLUS and MINUS" lies in its willingness to tackle several deeply resonant Nigerian themes simultaneously.
Juju, Rivalry, and the Hustle
The conflict between Polynus and Chama directly addresses the widespread, albeit uncomfortable, belief in spiritual manipulation (juju) in commerce. The film doesn't shy away from depicting Chama's literal transaction with a native doctor to secure customers. This element is a powerful commentary on the desperation and lack of trust that permeate the hustle culture, where success is often attributed to dark forces rather than hard work alone. The market setting acts as a microcosm of Nigerian capitalism—a place where the economic stakes are so high that fair play is abandoned for the occult.
The Temptation of Wealth vs. Integrity
This is the central moral question of the film. Fina’s money, delivered as a direct, untraceable solution to all of Agnes and Polynus’s problems, forces a crisis of character. The temptation of wealth is visualized not just as a better life but as a way to circumvent legitimate suffering. The film critiques the notion that love without money is miserable, a belief explicitly stated by Fina. The subsequent chaos in the marriage, even after acquiring wealth, proves the film's message that financial stability does not equate to emotional or social peace.
The Crushing Pressure of Wedding Expectations
The wedding scene is the film’s most biting piece of social commentary. Polynus and Agnes, having acquired enough capital to throw a grand ceremony, use their newfound (and still unverified) status to enact bizarre and demanding rules on their guests. Their insistence on a minimum gift of ₦50,000, their public humiliation of guests, and their self-centered focus on being the "star" of their own event, perfectly encapsulates the crushing financial and social pressure surrounding Nigerian weddings. The event becomes less about union and more about a conspicuous display of transactional wealth, a desperate attempt to prove their arrival into the elite class.
5. The Wedding Scene's Brilliant Irony (A Masterclass in Awkwardness)
The climax, centered on the wedding, is a masterclass in dramatic irony and dark comedy. The setup is one of maximum entitlement: Agnes's explicit instructions for a "no noise, no dance past me" event, and the humiliating financial demands. This is contrasted immediately by the arrival of the Chief, a wealthy benefactor who had promised to turn the couple into millionaires.
The ultimate twist, where the Chief presents a seemingly insulting gift of ₦5,000 after all their arrogance, creates immediate, palpable tension. The reaction of Polynus and Agnes—who publicly confront and attempt to retrieve an expensive wine gift from the Chief—is peak comedic and dramatic irony. They have elevated themselves so quickly that they forget their place, demanding respect and wealth from a man who is clearly testing their humility and gratitude.
The dramatic irony is layered: the audience knows the Chief possesses the power to bestow immense wealth, but the couple’s greed and self-aggrandizing behavior almost make them forfeit the blessing. Their frantic, ugly scramble to retrieve a ₦20,000 bottle of wine in the presence of the man who holds the key to millions is a devastatingly accurate satire of priorities corrupted by sudden status. It’s a structurally brilliant scene, showing the cost of vanity just before the final, dramatic denouement changes their fortune forever.
6. Critical Verdict and Rating (The Final Word)
"PLUS and MINUS" is a sprawling, flawed, but ultimately captivating piece of cinema. It trades subtlety for social commentary, delivering its themes with the volume turned up to ten. While the film struggles with its pacing and some of the melodrama is excessive, its core performances and the structural genius of the final wedding confrontation elevate it above typical fare.
Stephen Odimgbe and Ekene Umenwa successfully navigate the difficult transformation from relatable strugglers to morally compromised opportunists, providing a powerful look at the human cost of financial desire. The film serves as a potent reflection on the Nigerian fixation with wealth, the temptations of spiritual shortcuts, and the often-absurd pressure cooker of social rituals. It asks difficult questions and offers a chaotic, yet satisfying, answer. It’s a conversation starter, a controversy magnet, and an essential watch for understanding contemporary Nollywood's sociological leanings.
Critical Verdict: A bold, controversial, and structurally intriguing social satire that overcomes its technical shortcomings through sheer performance power and thematic relevance.
Rating:.................. 4 / 5 Stars
Conclusion: Your Must-Watch for the Weekend
Whether you love or hate the excesses of "PLUS and MINUS," you cannot deny its ability to provoke thought and conversation. From the chaos of the market to the awkwardness of the most demanding wedding in cinema history, this film is a wild ride. Don't just watch it for the drama—watch it for the characters who dare to challenge the belief that money solves everything, only to find that their problems are merely upgraded. Go stream "PLUS and MINUS" now and decide for yourself: was Polynus more cursed when he was poor, or when he got rich?
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