Review of Half of a Yellow Sun

Half of a Yellow Sun is a fantastic novel, so any adaptation was going to be very difficult. Adapting a great book should be approached with care and most successful adaptations have focused on one or two key events or characters rather than try to retell the whole story. In this case, the adaptation attempted to tell the whole story and, subsequently, manages to avoid any depth as it simply skims along the surface in order to get the end. Often, scenes which serve no point other than to relay a piece of background information continually appear and it is shocking that such experienced film makers failed to guide the writer/director away from such obvious pitfalls. In order to accommodate as many details as possible from the novel, many superfluous scenes lead only to confusion and rely on the audience either having read the novel or having in-depth knowledge of Nigeria's history. Some characters appear only to serve as expositional devices. This film has one or two excellent performances DESPITE the material but generally the actors appear to be at a loss as to what to do. This is the director's first movie and it could that he wasn't comfortable with the pressures of time and of shooting out of sequence.

It is sad to be so 'down' on a movie that has its heart in the right place, and one can only imagine that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie must rue the day that she allowed her beautiful work to be adapted by someone who had little or no grasp of the screen writing process that could have turned out a great film script.