AMVCA Snub: Where Did “Gingerrr” Go Wrong?

Nollywood film Gingerrr entered the 2026 Africa Magic Viewers’ Choice Awards (AMVCA) with nine nominations, and seemed set to dominate the night. It had commercial success,  star power, and an aggressive marketing campaign that made it virtually impossible to miss. In an industry increasingly obsessed with scale and spectacle, it looked exactly like the kind of movie that would sweep the award show. Yet, Gingerrr left the AMVCAs empty-handed.

It was not the only film with multiple nominations to underperform at the Awards. Gingerrr tied with The Herd for the most nominations of the year, and The Herd secured only one win for Linda Ejiofor-Suleiman in Best Supporting Actress.  And yet, the reactions to both films’ snubs online were opposite. Unlike The Herd, whose losses generated sympathy and shock, Gingerrr’s AMVCA shutout was met with shrugs, jokes, and outright satisfaction. In fact, the only confusion seemed to be over how the film secured so many nominations in the first place. On X, reactions repeatedly circled the same complaints, such as incoherent storytelling, weak writing, tonal confusion, bloated pacing, and a film that looked expensive but never felt emotionally grounded. The consensus was brutal. For many viewers, the AMVCA results simply reflected what they already thought of the movie.

Initially released in September 2025 in cinemas and now streaming on Netflix, Gingerrr became one of Nollywood’s biggest commercial successes of all time after grossing over ₦500 million at the box office. This raises a bigger question surrounding the film: how did a movie with so many structural issues draw such a large audience and secure nine AMVCA nominations?

Watching Gingerrr in retrospect, the zero-win AMVCA outcome hardly feels shocking. Directed by Yemi Morafa and written by Xavier Ighorodje, the film follows four estranged female friends who reunite for a daring heist under desperate circumstances, only for their plan to be threatened by personal agendas and buried secrets. Produced by and starring Bukunmi “Kie-Kie” Adeaga-Ilori, Bisola Aiyeola, Bolaji Ogunmola, and Wumi Toriola, the film was helmed by an executive team whose collective filmographies boast critical and commercial hits like Omo Ghetto: The Saga, Sugar Rush, and Shuga Naija. So how then did Gingerrr end up feeling like such a disappointment? Was it a case of too many cooks in the kitchen?

Gingerrr is not completely devoid of merit. There are genuinely strong technical elements throughout the film. Visually, it is impressive. The cinematography is fantastic, especially the nighttime scenes where the lighting and framing give Lagos a moody, neo-noir texture. The production design is equally strong. The shrine sequences feel immersive, the slum and rooftop locations add texture, and the overall scale of the production is ambitious in a way that Nollywood should continue to aspire towards. A lot of the action set pieces work too. Even when the film is collapsing narratively, the technical team is often doing everything possible to keep it alive visually. But technical polish alone was never going to outweigh the widespread criticisms surrounding the screenplay and overall narrative coherence. Good visuals and expensive production do not automatically make a good film. 

Only a few scenes into Gingerrr, it becomes obvious that the screenplay mistakes complexity for confusion. Plotlines pile on top of each other with little discipline. Characters appear, disappear, switch allegiances, reveal secrets, and launch into exposition-heavy monologues with almost no emotional grounding. The film constantly introduces ideas it either abandons or fails to properly explore. By the final act, the movie is a jumbled, incoherent collection of vaguely related scenes. Gingerrr suffers from tonal confusion. It is marketed as an action comedy, and while there is certainly action, the comedy rarely lands consistently enough to justify the label. The film swings awkwardly between slapstick humour, melodrama, crime thriller, supernatural mysticism, and emotional tragedy without properly blending them together. That weak grasp of storytelling is where the film completely loses itself.

The writing is cluttered with underdeveloped subplots, unanswered questions, and perplexing twists that seem included purely for shock value. Characters have vague motivations, and so their emotional beats land with a thud because the audience has little reason to care. Important reveals feel unearned. Even the central friendship between the four women, supposedly the emotional backbone of the movie, never feels convincingly developed. This issue extends to the performances themselves. The cast did their best, but most actors are trapped beneath dialogue so melodramatic and unnatural that it is nearly impossible to elevate. The accents are also all over the place. Bisola Aiyeola emerges as the clear standout, much like she did during her memorable run on Big Brother Naija in 2017, largely because she seems to understand the exact type of movie she is in. Her comedic timing and sheer screen presence inject badly needed energy into scenes that would otherwise lack velocity completely. Shaffy Bello who played Remy Blaq, and Odunlade Adekola, who played Ade Shine, also delivered solid moments. 

In an industry still trying to prove it can mount large-scale productions, there is understandable excitement around movies that attempt spectacle. But ambition and aesthetics alone should not automatically translate into awards recognition. Gingerrr ultimately becomes a textbook example of all packaging and very little depth underneath. The film is so busy trying to appear exciting that it forgets to actually excite. Watching it feels like walking into a beautifully designed restaurant only to realise the food itself is not up to par.

Flashes of a genuinely entertaining film appear throughout the runtime. The ambition deserves credit, and the technical departments deserve praise, but the poor reception should not discourage emerging filmmakers from continuing to take big swings and risks. They should instead learn that spectacle works best when paired with restraint and strong storytelling, which Gingerrr critically lacks. Unfortunately, Gingerrr serves as a cautionary tale about what happens when filmmakers prioritise style over substance. In the end, there simply is not much ginger to Gingerrr.