What a waste

The Good Life with Eli F.J. Tajanlangit

The problem with “Kimmy Dora and the Temple of Kiyeme” is simple. It fails to live up to expectations, and our expectations are shallow. Nothing much, just to laugh at lighthearted and, sometimes, intelligent jokes lead actress Eugene Domingo is known for.

Its problem is compounded by the fact that it is a sequel to the highly-successful Kimmy Dora, which engaged a lot of moviegoers, it stayed on the marquee for weeks.

The new movie has been screening for over 10 days now, but from the reactions I’ve heard, it is not as engaging as the original version. I watched this during its premiere in Manila early this month, and I could not quite figure out what it wanted to be. I had then thought it was something that wouldn’t see its second weekend, but it is still showing, so maybe there is something there I am missing. I do not know what, really.

Like everyone else, I had gone to watch a comedy movie. What I watched was something that could not quite decide whether it was going to be a comedy or a horror film.

Which is sad, because the movie obviously had a lot of budget, and you could see the producers did not scrimp on funds. Down to the designer bags and shoes of Kimmy, for example, they used originals, rented, I heard, from moneyed collectors. In fact, Domingo jokingly noted during promotional blitz, that everytime they did a scene, the production staff was more concerned about the bags and shoes she was using because they had to be returned to the owners.

It also did not spare funds for the cast and crew to fly to Korea and do several scenes, including some in freezing snow that required special cameras and set-up.

It also used fantastic technicals – it even had scenes where the photos in an album moved like they were live, ala Harry Potter. They were seamless scenes that were pulled off properly in terms of technicality.

In cinematic values, however, such expensive scenes do not mesh properly.

In fact, one can only shake one’s head for the waste one sees on screen, waste because for such a glitzy production, it seemed to go here, there, and nowhere.

The movie is about Kimmy and Dora, twins who are as opposite as north and south. Kimmy is straight and serious, Dora is dumb and cheerful. They are haunted by a ghost, who turns out to be their father’s Korean girlfriend. They must now redress this generational sin by having one of them marry the retarded nephew of the jilted lover.

The story spans between Korea and the Philippines, over three generations, and I think the staggering scale of this alone was too much for the production, no matter if it was well-funded.

It takes a while for the story to crystallize, and one has to endure all the screaming and the shrill shouting all the while. Without any clue as to what this is all about, the jokes fall flat and the scenes go unappreciated. In fact, if it were not bad manners, I wanted to flee the moviehouse and be spared from all that noise.

“Kimmy Dora…” is produced by movie star Piolo Pascual, and I understand, some of his showbiz friends also invested here. It is an example of how investors can come together to make movies without being a movie studio – the way they do it in the US and United Kingdom.

Unfortunately, this did not turn out right.*

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