Kimmy More!

When Chris Martinez brought us the wonderful 100, we knew it’s only a matter of time before Eugene the great Domingo stars  in a movie of her own. If 100 wasn’t such a good movie itself, we’d have clamored for another Eugene movie. But Martinez’ film debut was great and it filled a void. Months (or was it years) passed and still no sign of Eugene in the big screen. So we go and see those that has her as supporting player in movies like ITALY (I Trust & Love You), Tanging Ina Nyong Lahat and Ploning. But these movies are NOT great and Eugene can only do SO MUCH. She may be a terrific actress but she can’t single-handedly and magically turn crap into cinema greats. She’s human too.

And then Facebook resurfaced as the premiere social networking site and we suddenly have the means to stalk our divas and rock stars. It provided a platform for announcing our fanaticism for something and anything and so we hurriedly Become a Fan of the great actress of our time. And through this formidable medium we got a  glimpse of a great movie in the making called Kimmy Dora, Kambal sa Kyeme. Finally, redemption! Eugene will have a movie out and it looks like she would play twins! Not only was there going to be a Eugene movie, it’s going to be a Eugene movie written by Chris Martinez and set to star two Eugenes. Orgasm.

In the movie, Miss Eugene plays Kimmy, the acerbic and poisonous boss of Go Dong Hae Corp, and the twin Dora, the adorable half-twit who effortlessly elicits the affection of people and their mogul dad played with uncorny enthusiasm by Ariel Ureta. Kimmy is the fitness buff, the over-achieving Go Dong Hae daughter who is the family’s brains and allegedly, beauty. But the unassuming Dora is the twin who manages to get the adoration of the dad and the office hunk Johnson (Dingdong Dantes) without ever having to do so much. This and the fact that Dora is the exact opposite of her gets on Kimmy’s nerves and her hatred towards the half-retarded sister is only magnified by their father’s decision to bestow only a margin of his estate to her while Dora gets the bulk. The unputdownable Kimmy is unhappy so she confers with an equally evil colleague played by Baron Geisler. Things go out of hand when Baron’s character mistakenly hears from their phone conversation certain instructions that are actually intended for the house ipis, that is, ‘paluin ng tsinelas, tapakan, at itapon sa malayo’ the clueless Dora. Trouble and endless parade of funnies then ensue when Baron calls for the kidnapping of Dora to execute what actually is an ipis plan.

The movie is mostly character-driven, not heavily relying on plot to move things forward, but when you have Eugene as your star, that is probably the best way to go about it. In Kimmy, the action is relegated to the reliable shoulders of Eugene Domingo and she doesn’t disappoint even though there’s hardly any action. In typical Pinoy comedy, action here happens in the kidnapping scenes which call for the escape plans,  police chases, and the inevitable jail scene. Sadly but not despairingly, not much of the plot works and towards the end, the resolution feels a bit rushed and it didn’t make much sense that the police knew where the kidnapped was taken to because even though Dora, the intended victim, could have wormed the information out of Baron, she is clearly not too sharp to do it and the movie doesn’t even show that she tried. But what the movie lacked in plot movement, it more than made up for great characterizations, even those who are in scenes for not more than 10 minutes. Chris Martinez is after all, more adept at developing complex, interesting characters. And in this, he made plenty.

If I haven’t emphasized it quite enough, let me just say again, Eugene Domingo is a great, magnificent, and super good actress. When she speaks lines like ‘Najejebs ako!’ in a retarded fashion as definitely called for by the script, prepare to die laughing. You’d also die in her other scenes, such as the ones in the office where she terrorizes her co-workers and Johnson, specifically by doing a Sharon-Stone-in-Basic-Instinct leg-crossing minus the crotch-flashing bit, the Julia-Roberts-in-Notting-Hill swimming pool scene (there is no such scene in Notting Hill) where she asks for the very pogi Johnson to love a floating girl, scenes with the katulong who very funnily calls her ate Kemmy and ate Dura, the ones with Zanjoe Marudo where she bitches for every inconvenience she experiences, basically in each and every scene she’s in. The days of Eugene Domingo stealing scenes from her supporting roles is over at least for now.

Although not burdened by the numerous cameos of stars, one had to wonder why this had to be.  Maybe they didn’t trust her enough to carry the movie on her own and that it’s necessary to have some super famous celebrities turn up in certain scenes? That would have been a wrong assumption as the movie is All Eugene. Or maybe it’s a stroke of brilliance. We don’t get to see a lot of that in Pinoy movies and it’s quite fun to see the likes of, well, just see for yourself on September 2 when the movie officially opens which big stars show up.

The bevy of ’stars’ in the supporting cast actually did good and they were quite enough if there ever was concern about the lack of Major Big Stars. Take Dingdong Dantes for example, a pogi actor who was good and believable as a hunk who’d fall for a dork like Dora. What makes his performance good is that he doesn’t seem too self-aware in the tradition of good-looking actors who maintain expressions that seem to pander to the idea that they’re pogi playing the lovestruck hunk pining for the unattractive character (not actress, take note). Also of note is Ariel Ureta who does not resort to the cartoonish Chinese billionaire depiction, also in the tradition of billionaire Chinese dads in movies who feel like they have to speak with a Ching-chongese accent to put the message across that they’re playing a Chinoy businessman. And who could forget the katulong who, in her maybe 8 minute scenes managed to be unforgettable? Martinez and his casting troupe know talent where they see one. The Kimmy katulong reminds me of Me-anne, the 100 katulong. Miriam Quiambao, Baron Geisler, Zanjoe Marudo, all pretty actors managed to not just look good but hold up their own beside The Great Actress.

Kimmy Dora is the first feature film of a newly established firm, Spring Films  and supposedly the first time a press screening was held for a local movie. It is also the first starring role for Eugene Domingo and boy, what a way to start. For now, those of us who slobber over Eugene movies have this to feed us for the meantime. In the press screening, one can sense a certain asking tone from the producers and understandably so because we’re not likely to see the trailer in those two local channels of ours who are affiliates of major film studios, Viva and Star Cinema who make sure that when their movies are to be launched, we’re reminded one freaking month ahead of the showing dates. The promotion and marketing for Kimmy Dora will probably largely depend on good word-of-mouth and Facebook and maybe Twitter and that might not be enough and that would be a shame because Kimmy, while not perfect, is largely better than the song lines-titled romances we’ve been getting since forever. I guess all I’m saying is if you can sense a future aching for another Eugene movie or maybe even a Chris Martinez movie, go see this and die just a little.

All About Chemistry

My only real purpose for desiring to drink in abnormal amounts is that so I could gain weight. I don’t have a larger and more significant agenda. It’s also not an attempt to look cute. Only a few guys can pull off the adorable-chubby look and I’m sadly not one of them. Bianca, a girl I once foolishly thought of going out with, pointed out that I’d look like an absolute butete if I pursue this hobby. She’s sweet. I once heard the story of my ex-girlfriend’s father and how he became the Fat Man I saw him as and I briefly and stupidly aimed to look exactly like him, minus the bad skin, which I’m starting to develop anyway, once we get married. They say that guys who used to be pencil-thin can miraculously turn into a giant fat-ass if and when taken excellent care of by their wives. Needless to say, no one would be willing to take on that responsibility because I seriously like guys. But I’d like to delude myself a little sometimes and think that maybe there’s still hope.

I’m still stuck at 120 pounds and it sucks. I try to eat everything served on a plate and wax paper. Drinking beer before meals is cruel to the liver but to the stomach, it is a riot. Sometimes work feels like a trap. It’s a trap but it affords me the beer. I don’t like the warmness of hard liquor because it’s warm in Manila as it is so I’m strictly a beer person. I think it really runs in the family because my father scoffs (not really) at other liquor types. I once got him a Marks & Spencer wine for his birthday and he used it as decoration. But I don’t think wine warms you up. My father may have intended for the wine to age and I was tempted to point out that sticking a wine in the cupboard at room temperature does not constitute the proper wine-aging process. Naturally, I don’t wish to spite my father who is himself a hopeless drunk, by drinking (almost) every night.

Me and drinking started getting serious when I was at my most despondent. I can’t recall exactly when I was at My Most Despondent but it’s probably when I started to seriously consider reenacting scenes from American Psycho because I had so much unexplained drama. This is of course false. Patrick Bateman is way out of my league. I could never ape his deeds. I can’t recall the time but me and beer had chemistry. We had spark. Just like Nicolas Cage and Elisabeth Shue in Leaving Las Vegas. A hooker and a drunkard shacking up together in Las Vegas to try and simulate a happy couple life is about as plausible as that same drunkard trying to ditch drinking by joining a Christian worship group. It’s a weak analogy but you get the idea. It can probably work, if you think about it. A drunk can’t get his dick up all the time because almost all the energy is spent on trying to work up an appetite for the night’s binge and the typical whore is probably so spent on all the sex she’s had so this relationship is probably the most sensible of all relationships.

I like this movie very much. It’s definitely overkill to watch this movie and drink at the same time but that’s the kind of effect it had on me. Now I know why there’s censorship. Me and my juvenility (sabi nga ni Transit Counter). The reference to this movie is not just a passing one. I just wasn’t sure how to talk about the film. I saw it this afternoon and it made me want to drink. Mike Figgis, or whoever else is responsible seem to try to point out that getting drunk is not necessarily such a bad thing which explains the festive, jazzy, laidback soundtrack. I totally agree with that hypothetical point. It could be that people simply give more thought to addiction (pardon the term) to drinking than is necessary. It could be that alcohol is the actual root of all evil. I don’t really know. I’m too drunk to care. My point is that it feels very good when you’re drunk. You don’t need a powerful film to point that out for you.

Bitches

If you feel like distressing yourself a little watch Amorres Perros. Mexican (Spanish yata) language is pretty but it’s second only to French. Before this, the last movie I saw was Pulp Fiction and I’m not citing this because I’m about to make some groundbreaking juxtaposition about these 2 great films. They are very similar structure-wise but what I want to say is that the Uma Thurman coke scene is NOTHING compared to the shit you see in Amorres Perros. Pulp Fiction’s still the smarter movie but if you want to see something that will make you want to turn your pretty eyes away, see this.

It’s about time I stop making not so subtle references to my personal life when talking about movies, books or CDs from here on out because it’s starting to get on your nerves not that I care about your nerves. We have to focus on the things themselves. So we start with Amorres Perros, a movie that’s so laden with a huge metaphor, which in spite of that metaphor (love being a bitch which is practically the title and in the movie you see lots of bitches, female dogs or just dogs, you get the idea) still managed to be very pokey. It really pokes you a lot. Your eyes especially. The Cinema lover in you will love the cinematography and the script and all the technical aspects of the FILM not movie but the meat lovers will love the in your face treatment of certain scenes: the industrial engineer’s blood frying over the frying pan or burger pan or whatever the hell it is, the car crash scenes played repeatedly over and over again twice not once, the dying dog scenes, the frying Mexican breakfast scenes, basically anything that involves frying, and the Gael Garcia Bernal scenes.

For ME though, this movie is about people getting exactly what they deserve. Karma is not the big theme here but everyone gets their comeuppance in almost perfect intervals. Remember Babel, the Brad Pitt-Cate Blanchett movie with the multiple settings and shit? Amorres Perros is its grandma. It has episodes and multiple storylines that can get on MY nerves but unlike the Brad Pitt Movie, this Film interweaves those scenes seamlessly. It’s like a day in the life of these random, average and pretty Mexicans. In the episodes, we get a look on the lives of dog-fighting trade-dependent Gael (in a Gael Garcia Bernal movie, you don’t care for the character’s name. His name is the least of your petty concerns), Valeria and Emilio Echevarria (the actor, who is GREAT). They all have someone in their lives which they all love to death and each said loves are represented or are gifted with the presence of a dog or bitch and all are fucked up one way or the other because of these loves or bitches. See how shrewdly the love-bitch metaphor played out?

ME, it took me a while for the idea to sink in. I AM quite literal minded so I thought when I first saw (and marveled at) this masterpiece, ‘what a great, brutal, nasty movie’. I seriously, not trying to be funnily thought, Amorres Perros to be a movie about how dogs represent love and how it’s no mere accident that bitch has become a favorite and popular expression by people who are feeling shitty about someone they love or about something dog-like or something. Ang labo pero ganun. Like a slice of real life but much less corny.

Vexed in the city

So the reason why the Sex & the City movie was unashamedly and incompetently cut was due to the inadvertent collaboration of SM (a lousy, lousy mall), its stupid, non-exhibition of R-18 films rule, and MTRCB, that somewhat irrelevant branch of government/nunnery. These two institutions are so lucky. They’re able to fuck us up with the snap of their prissy, dirty, little fingers. The film’s distributor probably had a minor role but it’s completely unnecessary to snap at business organizations. It’s like scolding a 2 year old for pooping at will.

What may have happened was, fucking Shoe Mart, which should really stick to selling shoes, because of its R-18 films rule, kind of made the film distributors deem it necessary to have certain scenes and dialogues cut off so that the movie can pass as an R-13 fare, a decision which will ultimately decided by the almighty, sanctimonius MTRCB. Otherwise, SM cinemas, which are everywhere, will not show the film. First of all, most SM cinemas are awful. Why would anybody want to see movies there? People associated with the management of SM are clearly a highly unimaginative group of businessmen. They think that showing R-rated films will tarnish the ridiculously perceived reputation of the mall as a family-oriented place because the movies they exhibit have scenes that show kabastusan, an idea that is open to lots of interpretation. It’s an idea that is obviously lost on them. Aren’t they being bastos when they decide that certain artists’ works aren’t fit for public viewing?

But that manipulative shopping bully may not be the only culprit here. Maybe we also say nasty shit to MTRCB. Maybe we also say shit about the bobo distributors who subject movies to pointless censorship. They can take it. This movie, while not super awesome, is based from a very good TV show about sex. I would have preferred to talk about this excellent movie but I would so much rather have said shit about SM and stupid, rich business people and MTRCB doofuses. SATC is a good fucking movie. SM Malls, MTRCB, Distributors are shit.

Zitgeist

I saw The Savages. Why The Savages strikes a chord. It’s about Laura Linney and Phillip Seymour Hoffman as siblings who are forced to take care of their shit-smearing father. My kind of movie.

Why I’m not surprised to remember an ex every time I play Crucify. Resolved, that no effort will be made to crucify myself through pointless and laughable work-outs, no amount of Red Horses will be consciously consumed if and when San Mig Light is available and abundant. It tastes like water but it’s better to inject that than having to suffer a beer gut in your early 20s. You are a homo and that’s exactly the kind of thing you should be worrying about.

And on a much weightier issue, echoing Connor McKnight:

This hormonal surge was accompanied by a bad case of acne; at the exact moment when sex invaded and colonized my imagination. I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting anything physical to do with me.

I was peeping through some Tower Records staff’s pants and saw that which drives me nuts with horn. The garter of an underwear. Imagination truly works when you want it to. I had to look at the face but couldn’t because they (there were two of them) were taking down the pre-owned CDs from the sad-looking shelves of the once magnificent Tower Records Makati. I could not get over that black garter, from the underwear that I wanted so much to smell. It must have smelled glorious. I’d have sniffed it without keme. I’m a smeller. Everybody knows that. Sex is really, really invading my imagination. But what to do in a curtainless room. What to do in a virtually doorless room. Because sniffing your own underwear will only work if you hadn’t had a severe case of diarrhea which you frequently get from gulping Tabasco.

Tori Tori Tori, I don’t get you but you sound so true.

Jay McInerney, while not exactly a genius, Connor McKnight said the most spot on sentiment about how I feels about this late surge of zit and libido. But if there’s any joy to be had in this, this growth, it’s that I’ve read somewhere that maybe, the dick still has a chance to grow because adolescents, those who are just starting to get hormonal surges quite late in life, are still very much in the process of growing things. And I’m not just being bastos. It’s just that I sound so true when I’m being very honest.

Pretender

Like the average pretentious moviegoer, I usually insist on seeing Oscar nominated films as if I’m preparing to have random discussions about them with a fellow pretentious moviegoer first chance I get. I don’t jump into any opportunity to discuss anything and I am almost incapable of contributing anything useful to any conversation which is why I mouth words most of the time. So no, I don’t choose to see Oscar movies because I want to discuss them. It’s that there are less people who want to see them.

Juno is probably the most appropriate movie for me to see this Oscar season because it’s very cute. I think the writing has a lot to answer for whatever negative was said about it but it’s too charming to be dismissed as anything as less than excellent. It is filled with dialogues that are way too witty for a movie that takes on a slightly sensitive, but ultimately comic topic as teen pregnancy, and every character in Juno sounds like someone off of an Oscar Wilde creation. But the upshot is that it’s funny and you really wouldn’t mind hearing JK Simmons, Allison Janney and Ellen Page throwing off these lines that occasionally felt like material for a sitcom, because they spit them out well. Jennifer Garner, who did not make much of a splash here, almost equaled Juno, cuteness-wise. And I’ll say this for the soundtrack: I’ll buy it.

I’ve never cared much for the artsy, Oscar nominated films such as In the Bedroom, Traffic, Gosford Park, The Pianist, etc., movies that are ostensibly smart, but I may have given the impression that I loved them simply because I was able to follow the stories. I was such a pretentious twit. I don’t scramble now to see There Will Be Blood, No Country for Old Men, The Diving Bell & the Butterfly, and all the other Oscar nominees and I’m sure they’re all great but their distributors are hoes who don’t trust people enough to have the good sense to screen them on more theaters so that more people can pretend to want to see them. But there’s no way I would have missed Juno. And I don’t pretend to like it. Even if it is Oscar nominated. And that’s more than I can say for the rest of the nominees.

Wag po, kuya

My Kuya’s Wedding is one of the ugliest movies I ever saw on DVD. I don’t recall having walked out of any movie before, ever and I almost did with this and at P25, the rental seemed stiff for such kind of grand gesture of disgust. It should at least be entertaining or cute or something, instead, it was disturbingly sweet and wrong that not finishing it would seem an injustice to that poor 25 bucks.

It’s not very, very ugly, just awkward and very corny. It would have been OK if the Kuya Ryan Agoncillo was trying to portray was fat, uncharming and 50% gay. But welcome to Allan Tijamo and Topel Lee’s fantasy world of Filipino family life where the Kuya clutches at his younger sister like he would his girlfriend and where the little sister is perilously close to grabbing his older brother by the crotch. Maja Salvador and Agoncillo have chemistry alright. Their scenes bring to mind taboo x-rated films of the late 70s or early 80s, starting off innocently like 2 siblings so very much into each other they seem very much in the verge of humping each other’s brains out. Maja and Ryan are all over each other, you wonder if the movie’s going to take on a more interesting and sexier, better direction.

‘Kumain tayo ng halo-halo kuya.’

‘Sige.’

This is one of the most memorable scenes in the movie, as the 2 possibly sexually repressed siblings have intense craving for halo-halo. But it would have been memorable if the scene had been like this,

‘Tanggalin mo na yang shorts at brief mo Kuya.’

‘Sige.’

This movie is such a tease it makes you want to cry.

Ugly may not perfectly describe this monstrosity. That may be too harsh, I admit but everyone’s just terrible here. All in all, involving one’s self with the watching, starring, or renting of My Kuya’s Wedding entails wastage of things. They include: Ethel Booba, 25 pesos, a potential taboo screenplay remake. I obviously have high hopes for the Filipino film industry. But I have higher hopes for the revisiting of old porn flicks. This movie unwittingly sparks certain hopes, in its own corny, pa-cute way.

Chinese movie

In Chopsuey, Piolo Pascual plays the Kuya of three troubled sisters who are all supposed to be Chinese. The sisters are portrayed by Dimples Romana, Andrea del Rosario and Krista Ranillo. It’s hard to take this cast seriously because casting Piolo and them as Chinese seems like a joke. But the joke does not end there.

Jimmy (Piolo) plays the wealthy Chinese guy, all sulky because he was left at the altar by some girl who left him for a Filipino. Obviously, that fiancé of his was a very stupid girl. But what could be more stupid than making Piolo Chinese. The film doesn’t seem to require much from the actors so that may be why he chose to speak in monotone throughout the rest of it, only projecting an emotion in the voice-overs, which would be admired in a poetry recital. And then there’s Dimples’ character Claire who is also going through Serious Emotional Stress. It’s probably because she is troubled with the burden of being forced to look Chinese. Jerking aside, she was amazing here. And then there’s Andrea del Rosario who is hot and Krista Ranillo who is not.

Troubled Chinese families have been the subject of all those craptacular Mano Po movies so you know we’ve had enough. Why someone had to make this movie is baffling. Also baffling is the husband of Claire who is such a terrible fuck. Evidence of Romana’s effectiveness is the loathing you develop as the creep husband commands poor Claire. There are scenes of Buddha, incense, doors, stairs, vegetables and some other thing that’s supposed to mean something. And the call center joke (a character pronouncing it as call se-ner) has been heard before. Much as people love that joke, it’s getting corny. There are also the terrific Piolo voice-overs that seem to make up for the film’s lack of solid narrative.

The trouble with some indie films is you don’t know if you’re not getting it because it’s very deep or because you’re stupid or because it really means nothing and it’s nagpapaka-profound. The title is very fitting though. Chopsuey is a mishmash of characters, confrontations and emotions that never get anywhere. Like the dish it was named after, everything in the movie like they were just randomly tossed in. Too bad.

Bodies and brain

Jeffrey Jeturian’s movies are the type that when you see their trailers, you’re not sure if they’re good or bad. (Because really, what unhorny person would have wanted to see Pila Balde or Bridal Shower had there not been any promise of titillation and crassness, which is not to say that these films were very titillating or even remotely crass)? This statement would probably be true before Kubrador was made, the film that swept awards from as far away as Croatia or some crazy country somewhere in Europe. It would probably be true before mass adoration for Kubrador became the phenomenon among film people. But since it is more or less known that he’s one of Philippine cinema’s rock star filmmakers, it seemed necessary that I see his bikini movie Bikini Open.

Cherry Pie Picache is Susan, the chronicler of one of flitdom’s most anticipated events – bikini contests. Having suffered from a ratings clout, her station threatens to shut her off, if she won’t come up with a watchable and grittier episode of her lousy ass, garden variety news features show ‘Isyu Ngayon’. In a move of part-desperation and part-genius, she makes the transition to producing dirtier stuff which was supposed to mark the beginning of a brilliant career.

The mock-documentary style shows the director’s capacity to veer from the kind of conventional comedy filmmaking that is sort of becoming the trend of late – flamboyant, cartoonish and unfunny. Don’t you wish they redo the comedies of the 90s, the kind where there’s a sing and dance episode right smack in the middle of the film? The ones which used to star Manilyn Reynes, Tina Paner, Patrick Guzman, Andrew E, those kind. A throwback of sorts. Zsa-zsa Zaturnnah was semi-lousy.

Bikini is an insightful examination of media’s endless quest to achieve ratings domination which kills TV people’s creativity, something that is probably true of Channels 2 and 7. In this movie, that aim literally kills the anchor. Susan, though kind of flat (she’s mostly just a scheming, ratings-hungry media personality), was amusing in her desperation. Cherry Pie Picache hams it up a bit although at times she seems witless and flat-out bitchy. Francine Prieto, Rafael Rossell, Diana Zubiri, Alfred Vargas and other pretty and probably delicious actors lend very important presence. But semi-unknown JE Sison is the true find here. He’s not corny-looking and it doesn’t hurt that his launching vehicle required him to be in bikini about 90% of the time. My only beef with the movie is the contest’s venue. Although it’s not totally improbable that a special reports program would feature the bikini craze (because it is undoubtedly an interesting subject), a grander setting would have seemed less crazy, like, say, a bikini contest sponsored by an underwear brand, like the true-to-life Mossimo bikini contest. But that would probably be less funny without the stand-up comics. And this one’s funny so it’s a relief Jeturian had smaller ambitions.

As with most sexy comedies, the packaging is often misleading and hopelessly tacky. I mean the posters and the trailers for them are sucky. And I don’t really recall seeing the trailer for this movie, but Bikini Open or any of his films deserve nice trailers. He’s a rock star.

Dead Funny

Identifying with certain crowds is not something we should be doing. Ok, not something I should be doing. But I’ve been going on about certain types of movie-going crowds so why stop now? So, I finally felt at ease with this particular crowd, the kind who saw Apat Dapat, Dapat Apat. They were ok. They were the type who would gleefully smack anyone who dares to smirk at the movie’s crassness.

Four women from the weird side of the tracks, Res, Brite, Dally and Gay are cartoon characters made to appear as humans because really good actors played them. Candy Pangilinan plays the Kenny MacCormack-like Res whose purpose in this movie is to die and be the plot driver. With her are Rufa Mae Quinto as the bimbo undertaker, Eugene Domingo as the loudmouth piano teacher/wife of Christian Vasquez (who is a site in briefs) and Pokwang as the gangly and dancey MMDA officer who is the mother of, if you can believe it, that dude who plays the cute son and the wife of that other dude who plays the cute dad. I like Wenn Deramas’s humor.

The story, which if anybody calls silly or stupid would surely backfire, moves along dizzyingly fast which gives the movie just about the right length to showcase everyone in their comic glory. And if I start to tell just how funny the movie is, I might sound exaggerated myself. Plus consider that Provoq guy Chester Nolledo and that other pretty guy (google them if you must) play Candy Pangilinan’s brother and they often figure in scenes not wearing much. And Kian of PBB, he’s here and he plays a very convincing straight-guy-turned-John Lapuz’s-lover. Who knew that any one of those PBB jerks could be so realistic in any role.

The movie may seem to overreach for laughs at times but it served its purpose. To make people laugh like idiots. It would still be funny if they just had all four of them talk in gibberish. Even in parts where the situations are just too much and in scenes where it feels too animated, such as in that sequence where they imagine being interrogated by Res’s brusko family which bordered on ka-OAyan, but was salvaged by Sugar’s (John Lapuz) osctracism, it was still impossible not to crack up.

Apat Dapat is just the sort of thing you’d expect from director Wenn Deramas: exaggerated scenarios, outrageous plot, loud and ridiculous characters that have ridiculous jobs, gay sidekicks and most noticeably, pretty male leads. And it all plays for the best because we kind of get the feeling that he knows just what we want from his movie. And if anyone could believe that in real life, it is possible that Eugene Domingo can get married to the likes of Christian Vasquez, Candy Pangilinan to her leading man (which is not to say that Candy is not pretty, just wacky), Pokwang to her leading man and that John Lapus can make out with Kian Kazemi (this one though, not so much), then we can consider this movie as one hell of an inspiration. And it can make us laugh like idiots. Fucking watch it.