Every Breath U Take

♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣

Majoy (Angelica Panganiban) is a hopeless romantic who believes in signs on which her life decisions are mainly based. On the contrary, Leo (Piolo Pascual) does not believe in such a trivial thing.  His mantra in life is to get ahead of everyone even if it meant breaking someone’s heart or stealing someone’s parking space. When the two cross paths, he is in it for play. She thinks he is the one, until their overtly contrived romance gets sabotaged by lunatic third parties who all seem to have come straight from some mental institution.

When you see this movie you would recognize an attempt to bring in something else to the story aside from the usual rom-com fare. The mere existence of the lunatics (siblings Smokey Manoloto, Joross Gamboa, Carlos Agassi, Wendy Valdez, +Ryan Bang) is a clear proof that they are aiming for an ensemble comedy with a tongue-in-cheek treatment, or something to that effect. The sad thing is that this attempt proves to be ineffective and goes head to head with the romance angle, which makes the movie seem as though it is lost in the director's struggle to find balance between the two.

What should have been done was to give the supporting roles to actors with more credibility in the box office and market the film as an ensemble comedy. What people see in the trailers instead is a giddy love story that does not offer anything new, and then you get into that cinema and find out that the said love story has to give way to some over-the-top subplots that do not make a lot of sense. All this should have been enjoyable at least. Unfortunately, only a few scenes stand out. Other than that, everything else seems to be a hodgepodge of half-baked attempts on coherent storytelling.

Ryan Bang is the perfect example of a “comedian” that you would either just love or hate, without any middle ground whatsoever. He is tolerable as himself but in this movie, he is acting when he should not be. The end result is more of annoyance rather than hilarity. Some people in the audience were laughing though and I find myself torn in concluding whether I was just an insufferable KJ or they were just hopelessly shallow.

Piolo Pascual does comedy. There really is nothing wrong with his performance here but somehow he seems to have lost that onscreen charm he used to have when still paired with Judy Ann Santos. This does not mean to say that he has no chemistry with the leading lady. Or maybe the best conclusion is that she just outshines him, without much of an effort.

If the movie has a saving grace then that would be no other than Angelica Panganiban herself, although one would still notice that something is amiss. Perhaps, it is the character? The image that seems to have stuck with Angelica as far as the viewing public is concerned is either that of the fierce babaeng bakla or the likeable bitch; to be more specific, her roles in Here Comes the Bride and Rubí, respectively. The same thing happens to Anne Curtis with those woman of the world roles that she portrays. The difference though is that Anne seems to have reached that point of her career in which people are more tolerable when she takes on a relatively lighter role that does not involve too much display of acting prowess; in short, pa-cute­ roles. For Angelica, it seems like the public is not yet ready.

When you see how naive her character in this movie is, your first impression of her makes you want to give her a forceful pat at the back just to make her gain some common sense. The thing is, after half an hour or so you get to realize that she is, perhaps, the only one that is making you laugh here without trying too much, and so you end up liking her anyway. Just like Leo during that reenactment scene at the precinct, you realize that, hey, maybe this girl is worth the benefit of the doubt. As for the movie? Nah, I would probably ask you to think twice.