Malaysia Diaries 2.52: A Tale of Two Lovers

Whenever I think of Philippine Romantic Cinema, I think of hackneyed, shoddy plots, ridiculous plot contrivances, Deus ex Machinas galore and corny dialogue. Well this movie may not be a total surprise to me, but it does come out relatively satisfying. In the last few days I managed to watch the 2004 Philippine romance flick All My Life, starring Aga Mulach and Kristine Hermosa. The pair plays Sam and Louie respectively. Sam is a person who lives life in the moment. Louie is a person who lives life according to a set amount of organization. Their two lives collide when they meet each other in a ship cruise line thingy. When they first(? wink, wink) meet, Kristine does the best impression she can of a drunken whiny evil woman, but the master of that craft is still Jeon Ji-hyun. Things get underway rather fast. Anyway, you don't have to rely on me to know the plot of this movie: all you have to do is read the cover in the back of the VCD/DVD and that's basically the whole thing. Anyway, on to the review: Aga Mulach tries, tries, tries to get our sympathy and he probably will-he's good. We'd probably be annoyed by Kristine, but she looks great. There are a ton of contrived subplots that detract from the focus of the story rather than help it. Take the dillema regarding Louie's mother, for example. Her character is a one-dimensional cardboard cutout reminiscent of some of the characters of Million Dollar Baby, a movie that reeks of poor, manipulative screenwriting. When the plot point is resolved, it's quickly whisked under the carpet - failing to do anything within the story, something that at least MDB was successful at doing. Another thing: the editing choices in the first third or so in the movie, where Sam and Louie have happy times together, makes some of the scenes seem like a mishmash of scenes juxtaposed together. It immediately reminded me of Star Wars Ep. II, where a scene would just appear out of nowhere for the sake of character development, or the entire first half of the Korean movie Windstruck. It's up to your personal choice on whether you'd like this or not, but for me it didn't seem effective. The good - some plot contrivances don't seem contrived, which is nice. It's also nice to see the Manila Baywalk used as a setting for some of the scenes. And lastly, a bit of melodrama and romantic theatrics isn't that bad once in a while. After all the weepy melodrama and overly cheesy dialogue is done, at the very least you'd have a quarter of a tear wrenched from your face - assuming you managed to sympathize with the characters at all. Approach at your own risk.