Super Noypi

This year's Metro Manila Film Festival seem to have a good line up. Interesting enough to make me want to spend a few hundred pesos to watch some of them. Well, I actually want to watch all of them (like I could given the very busy week before the new year) except for that Lito Lapid starrer, Tatlong Baraha.

One of my indulgences is watching films. One subject I had in college was Film which obviously required us to watch a number of films for review, and that included local films. But that was about a decade ago where good quality Filipino films are still being produced. They come in trickles nowadays. Even the proliferation of indie films which are touted to be good cannot fill in the void yet.

My husband has a lot of reservations watching Filipino films. I know he is dragging his feet whenever I ask him to watch some local film with me. It always disappoints him. It seems there's always something lacking. There are times, magand na sana pero may kulang sa story telling. I cannot agree more but I'm still hopeful for the fate of Filipino movies so I still continue to support it.

Yesterday, we drove to a movie theatre near our place and watched Super Noypi with our daughter and her bestfriend in the neighborhood. We opted for Super Noypi since it's one of the two entries mainly intended for kids. The Vic Sotto starrer were overflowing with people and we don't want to get smashed. We want to enjoy. Afterall, the trailer of Super Noypi seems promising. And it was directed by Quark Henares. Notable films of Quark which I have watched - Gamitan, Keka and A Date with Jao Mapa. Not exactly for general patronage films but they are different - macabre with tinge of humor.

Even if it's Quark's movie, I still kept my expectations to the minimum. Maybe it will be just fine. To my surprise, it went far, far below my minimum expectations. Super Noypi is quite out of Quark's league. Not just quite, it is definitely not a Quark Henares film. It.is.very.disappointing.

It started off quite well even if the opening looked like a scene from some RPG war game and it's your typical futuristic world - cars flying, tall buildings what nots. I don't know what to make of the film. The Incredibles with all the families involved as super heroes? Space Kids out to save the world? X-men with all the different powers the protagonists possess? V for Vendetta for the futuristic element? Trying to capture the Wachowski Brothers' style - think Matrix, droplets of rain zoomed in and they all stopped at the will of Neo. Only, there's Mark
Herras here and the droplets of rain are too obvious cut and paste effect of some computer "genius". With these questions, you get the gist of the movie. I don't even have to make a synopsis anymore.

The movie obviously worked on a very low budget. It's like everything is made inside a drab studio. My daughter noticed a logo flashed in the supposed high-tech hideout of the bad guy played by Monsour del Rosario. She said "mommy, parang PLDT". It does resemble like the PLDT logo. And at the closing credits, one of their sponsors is indeed PLDT. My gosh, my gosh.

There are some Quark elements in the movie - Jao Mapa as the father of Mark Herras. A comment though, all the parents in the movie are quite young to be parents of college kids. A mention on Chicosci's new album, the overuse of one of these generation's gadget - the ipod, young people's angst and insecurities. And the sarcastic remark of John Pratts' character on Cueshe being his super favorite band. Now, that's funny.

I expected decent special effects and fast paced action at the very least. The stunts are so lame, specially Jennilyn Mercado's. She is so slow and so soft. There aren't enough action scenes that will liven up the pacing of the movie. Mark Herras too has not given any projection that will make it believable he is the group's leader. Only Polo Ravales and John Pratts and the child actor in the picture gave some acceptable acting. Sandara was funny at the start but she gets dragging as the movie went on.

The movie is ugly, even the color gradient of the film is yellowish. Why is it like that? And why did Quark Henares even made this movie? His creativity was compromised. Disappointing really.

And this movie earned another point for my husband's attitude whenever I discuss local films with him.