Andoy Ranay's "Diary ng Panget" - Shaking Heads and Slovenly Writing

Orphan girl Eya Rodriguez (Nadine Lustre), a self proclaimed “panget” (unsightly), finds herself employed as the personal maid of affluent Cross Sandford (James Reid), the goodlooking but bratty student council president of Willford, the prestigious college where Eya is a scholar. In a place populated by privileged half breeds and well heeled guys who can afford to buy P250,000 friendship rings for their crushes, Eya is an oddball. Popular cliques don’t even hide their aversion towards our pimple-ridden protagonist who seems oblivious to everyone’s antipathy. After all, she only has to deal with her employer’s (Gabby Concepcion) capricious son to earn the monthly P25,000. What’s better, they don’t have to like each other. He loathes her (or does he) as much as she dislikes him – and Cross can’t even “fire” her. 

But life gets easier when popular girl Lory (Yassi Pressman) takes Eya as her new best friend. Hasn’t this anything to do with the fact that Lory’s been harboring feelings for Cross since they were in kindergarten? (He once stood up for her against bullies.)

Plot thickens when popular jock Chad (Andre Paras) starts stalking Eya. What’s happening here? When Cross facetiously declares to everyone on campus that Eya is actually his girl friend, life gets more complicated for our heroine who now has to parry the blows against jealous school mates. Cross, on the other hand, requires her presence more and more. What to do?

Director Andoy Ranay’s film adaptation of this best-selling Filipino romance novel follows this director’s penchant for glossy, upper-middle class macrocosm (“Sosy Problems”, “When the Love is Gone”). Unfortunately, this acumen does nothing but highlight Ranay’s mediocre directorial vision. The first third of the narrative could have benefited with a snappy, tongue-in-cheek cadence. Mostly though, every cinematic artifice fell flat, you couldn't help but place Cross and Eya's catfights as inferior versions of Kathryn Bernardo and Daniel Padilla’s “Got 2 Believe” characters. The comparison is inevitable. But we don't think less of James Reid and Nadine Lustre’s charm quotient.

Reid and Lustre give it their best. By the film's middle part, they breach through the tedium of mediocrity and you actually start enjoying their earnest banter. How can you not fall in love with Reid’s dreamy gaze? If you’re a living-and-breathing female species, you won’t be immune to Reid’s cinematic punch. Why Star Cinema eventually let go of Reid, who is otherworldly gorgeous (and could sing like a prince), is beyond me. Andre Paras, on the other hand, suffers from pallid characterization. He seems too gimpy for a sports jock, you'd understand why girls would look elsewhere despite Paras' good looks and tall frame. Yassi Pressman meanwhile underwhelms. AJ Muhlach steals some misplaced scenes but his presence is nothing but random and disposable.

The story, feebly told in seeming episodes, is riddled with loopholes. In fact, the movie can't seem to make up its mind if the school's name(Willford) has a single or double "L". The individual issues likewise feel unsympathetic and fractured at best. What father would refer to his son as “half halimaw” to a stranger, even in jest? If Cross is really an irresponsible guy as we are made to believe, how did he get elected as the school’s student council president? Heck, he even moonlights as a model for Bench. In the scheme of things, jocks can be mean, but student council presidents are at least approachable and responsible. Cross is stand offish. Moreover, how can an employed maid go “fencing” with her employer? Why were her prickly acne conglobata appearing and disappearing from one scene to the next? Acnes the size of Neptune don't disappear overnight, not even with the world's most powerful concealers.

Andre Paras is Chad. Yassi Pressman is Lory (aka Lorraine Keet).

My main problem is the slovenly writing and the divergent narrative trajectory that eventually had me tsk-tsk’ing and shaking my head. Check out the masquerade ball. Wasn't that the most opprobriously choreographed musical number ever to have graced the silver screen in a long time? If you needed groovesome traction to underline youthful vibe or suspenseful foreboding, you’re better off finding that in TV5 talent Shalala’s ridiculously titled launching movie “Echoserang Frog” (also showing this week) than here. Why is Andoy Ranay mimicking Mac Alejandre’s humdrum film making skill? Hasn't years of theatre practice taught him narrative urgency or plotful congruity? The question is of course rhetorical because the answer is crystal.

When Eya finally shares her masquerade dance with the be-masked Cross, how can she not recognize him? It was baffling. She lived and worked closely (intimately, even) with Cross that she’d be half a nitwit not to recognize his physical form, smell, much less his voice! Yeah, yeah, he had colds - and you can tell that to the marines! Or was she really daft? And how can one desecrate Cinderella’s “lost shoe” chapter with a rather shoddy and absolutely egregious version? Did Eya suddenly turn into a magical teen queen that a dozen would show up to declare their love for her? Who owned that darn tattered, smelly-looking shoe? On their way to telling a story, someone got caught between vertigo and a daydream. It was embarrassing; it made me blush. 

James Reid

Nadine Lustre 

AJ Muhlach plays Ian, Cross' best friend and Eya's misplaced, err... fairy godfather.

Andoy Ranay's Sosy Problems - The Funny and the Unfinished

There’s unabashed delight in the depiction of bratty, filthy-rich social butterflies as seen in Andoy Ranay’s “Sosy Problems”. Lizzie Consunji (Rhian Ramos) leads an enviable pack of the “super duper rich” that further constitutes Danielle Alvarez (Bianca King), the daughter of a former congressman (Ricky Davao) with briskly dwindling fortunes; Margaux Bertrand (Solenn Heussaff), best friend of Claudia Ortega (Heart Evangelista). Margaux and Claudia’s relationship is dragged down by the simmering rivalry between their former beauty queen-mothers Martina (Cherie Gil) and Glory (Agot Isidro), Claudia’s mother. They’re the privileged bunch. They arrive in private helicopters; ride horses like Mikey Cojuangco; employ yayas who ride in specially-assigned cars; and they can sniff fake designer bags from a mile away.

But all’s not well on the horizon. The Polo Club, their favorite hangout, was bought by Bernice (Mylene Dizon), a former club cashier who got hitched to a billionaire. Bernice plans to turn the club into a Yaya Mall. The girls are appalled. After all, they couldn't fraternize with the masa. What becomes of their memories? More importantly, what happens to the employees of the club, some of whom have worked there half their lives. Lizzie turns to her dad for help, but he wouldn't budge so she takes matters into her hand. She organizes a picket to protest against the plan of the new owner. This gets them arrested for their stunt.

As punishment, Lizzie is sent to the remote town of Sapang Bato to join her lola (Nova Villa) and cousin Becca (Barbie Forteza). But provincial life is far removed from Lizzie’s cosmopolitan lifestyle. There are no clubs, no internet or wifi, and phone signal is intermittent, she had to climb a tree to secure one. Lizzie invites her friends to help get over the tedium of rural living, but they end up fighting with each other. What’s worse, Lizzie becomes a big burden, financial and otherwise, to her well meaning grandmother (her lola’s sister) and cousin.

Back in the city, Danielle starts to deal with her own financial troubles the only way she can. So she devises ways to hook up with Inaki Montinola (Alden Richards) whose fortune is legendary. With the help of Santi (Mikael Daez), a stranger he met at a party, she invites Inaki for dinner. Will she get an audience with the eligible bachelor? Would Inaki show up? Meanwhile, Margaux and Claudia are fighting over Benjo (Aljur Abrenica), the club’s good looking stable boy-cum-waiter who seems oblivious to the girls’ constant flirting. With their internal strife piling up, the fall of the Polo Club seems inevitable… or is it?

Andoy Ranay’s “Sosy Problems” is riddled with loopholes, you start to wonder if there were cognitive beings driving this cinematic vehicle. Aside from the threadbare plot, the motives of the characters are dubious. If these people truly had a plethora of riches, they had several options in the drawing room: 1. Hire a lawyer to negotiate their demands, not that they have proprietary say on a privately owned property; 2. Pool their resources and gather their amigas to buy the property from the new owner; 3. Take to the media by bombarding the public with articles about the poor employees; 4. Purchase another property and equip it with even better facilities. Planking at the facade is as ridiculous as the thought of someone purchasing the playground of the rich and famous. Besides, who did Bernice marry – the Prince of Brunei?

While on sabbatical at the province, Lizzie’s lola had to “steal” from her other granddaughter’s piggy bank because they were low on resources to support Lizzie’s whims. Didn't Lizzie’s dad (Johnny Revilla), a successful hotelier, send enough money to finance her daughter’s stay in the province? The lola could have easily asked from Lizzie’s dad and, surely, he wouldn't mind sending a few thousands of pesos. A lola stealing from her granddaughter is a grave mistake, even if this were meant for good intentions. Stealing is 8^th of the Ten Commandments, remember? This narrative strain is ill advised and reminds me of Sef Cadayona’s sexual assault in Emmanuel dela Cruz’s disputable “Slumber Party” where “rape” is horrendously treated with easy humor. We've never heard of grandmothers acting like juveniles since Australia’s Oscar-nominated “Animal Kingdom”. This isn't Oscar-worthy.  

The movie is, however, made bearable by the delectable turn of its lead stars portraying some of the most self-absorbed characters in local cinema. Rhian Ramos hams it up and shows why this role was written for her. She is brilliant and playful as bratty Lizzie. Think Alicia Silverstone's "Cher". Though humor in the film is a hit-and-miss affair, many of the gags involving our four ladies actually work. Enthusiasm is such an infectious malady. 

Take the “pilapil” (dike) scene: the girls wanted to visit the "pilapil” because someone told them it’s beautiful out there. Without an inkling of idea what a “pilapil” is, they march through dikes with high heels, wide brimmed hats and designer bags thinking they were heading into some kind of Shangrila when, in fact, they've reached their destination many times over. This really cracked me up. Another favorite scene was when the girls found a pot of mud they all thought was a facial regimen. They started rubbing  mud all over their faces while Claudia assures her friends with, “Don’t panic; it’s organic.” On the other hand, Bianca King’s part was the most sympathetic. Her story was better told than the rest. And King came out less of a caricature.

Mikael Daez registers strongly as the mysterious Santi, you couldn’t take your eyes off him. He was charming and he spoke well. Aljur Abrenica is a fetching Benjo, the club’s all-around boy, but then he isn't made to do much. There are cameos by Ruffa Gutierrez who plays the role of a lifestyle broadcast executive who wants to run a story about the girls. Tim Yap plays a bigger part (than previous movie roles) as Ruffa's lifestyle reporter.

The film actually stumbles hard as it scrambles into its finish line. Story telling turned reckless and banked on fast resolutions. The positive comeuppance felt undeserved because there were untold chapters that needed more narrative discourse. Elsewhere, the grapevine has tongues wagging: Ranay, the film’s director started acting flaky (think Angelina Kanapi) because his boyfriend left him. Sometime November, the still unfinished product was directorless. Grief has a way of skewing priorities, I know, but isn't Ranay a veteran theater habitue? You’d expect the demeanor of a stage professional, right? This was why Joyce Bernal was allegedly taken into the fold to finish the unfinished and do her editing magic. If this is true, then someone clearly doesn't deserve to work in the business again. Work is work. Oscar Wilde once said, “There’s always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.” With grief, people do ridiculous things. Unfortunately, he didn't suffer alone.       

Aljur Abrenica. This photo only courtesy of   http://raindeocampo.files.wordpress.com

Mikael Daez is Santi aka Santiago Elizalde, lawyer and son of an influential scion.