She Came for a Job, Stayed for the Chaos: A Lagos Love Story Review

You don’t usually expect a four-day love story to leave you thinking about class, survival, and sisterhood, but A Lagos Love Story manages to weave it all in with charm, detail, and a quiet kind of confidence.

The film introduces us to Promise, a young woman under pressure to save her family home from a government tax bill. She’s determined, sharp, and unwilling to beg. But when her attempt at securing a job flips into a four-day babysitting assignment for Afrobeat star King Kator, she has no choice but to play along. The setup sounds familiar—rich boy, girl from the trenches, worlds collide, but what makes this one stand out is the texture. The little things. The way the class divide isn’t just shown, but felt.

From the way Promise is treated at the event where she first meets Kator, to the snide remarks from upper-class women about her sister’s outfit, this film does something many Nigerian stories often miss: it captures the subtlety of inequality. Not every insult is loud. Sometimes it’s in who gets to speak, who gets ignored, and whose job it is to clean up after the show. And A Lagos Love Story leans into that.

But beyond class commentary, the film offers a multi-layered emotional core. It’s not just about whether Promise gets the contract or whether Kator falls in love with her. It’s also about the people orbiting them, the sister who’s tired of sacrificing, the team members with their own ambitions, the area boys who remind you that fame has a cost in places like Lagos. There are multiple small climaxes along the way, emotional turns that give the story weight beyond the romance.

And then there’s the romance itself. It unfolds with softness and tension, never too rushed, never too flat. Jemima Osunde brings her signature stillness to Promise, a kind of presence that makes her believable as both a caretaker and a woman trying to keep it all together. Mike Afolarin’s Kator plays the part of the flashy popstar well, but it’s in his quieter moments that the character works best: the slow warming up, the guarded vulnerability.

It helps that the songs in the film are genuinely good. “Bad Ass Fontain” and “Wait For Me” aren’t just filler, they’re part of the storytelling. The music video scenes, the fan interactions, the industry setups, all of it gives Kator’s world a believable rhythm. The background casting of familiar faces like Lanre Da Silva and Ibrahim Suleiman doesn’t hurt either; they add to the sense that we’re watching something real, something big-budget, but still grounded.

What really works here, though, is how the film reframes love. It’s not just romantic. It’s in the sisterhood. It’s in the family home that Promise clings to as a memory of their mother. It’s in the scenes at the buka, in the way the community rallies, and in the chaos of Lagos itself. You walk away feeling that this story isn’t just about two people falling for each other; it’s about why they had to.

Of course, it’s not perfect. Some character shifts, like Promise asking for the exact 20 million Naira she swore she’d never beg for, feel abrupt. Some emotional beats don’t get enough time to breathe. But the film never fully loses you. Even when it slips, the heart stays intact.

A Lagos Love Story is a familiar dish served with fresh seasoning. It doesn’t reinvent the genre, but it honors it. It reminds you that not all love stories are just about flowers and fireworks. Some are about survival. About knowing when to bend and when to fight. About learning that love, in Lagos, comes with noise, with class, with gbese, and with a rhythm all its own.

It’s not just about who falls in love. It’s about who has something to lose, and who shows up anyway.

Now streaming on Netflix.