Can't Help Falling in Love charms, but is based on a faulty premise

Hi.

Let's get this out of the way first. Can't Help Falling in Love, the latest vehicle from Star Cinema, can be charming sometimes. Daniel Padilla is great, and Kathryn Bernardo has improved a lot since her She's Dating the Gangster days. They have great chemistry together. Like all the other big love teams out there today, it's safe to say they're all reasonably talented actors and actresses.

But.

Can't Help Falling in Love bases its whole premise on a single fact: That Gab (Bernardo) and Dos (Padilla) drunkenly got married one night, jeopardizing Gab's impending marriage to Joshua (Matteo Guidicelli). This is inherently silly, because the amount of paperwork and required seminars etc. that a couple needs to get married here in the Philippines are probably not available to our protagonists in a dingy bar at 11pm. I mean, look at all the things you have to do. I found this through less than five minutes of searching on Google. Right then and there, the story should have been axed. But no, apparently whoever thought this up had no qualms going through the "Las Vegas wedding" angle and proceeding with the story.

That's just one of the things in the script that proves to be inherently problematic. Can't Help Falling in Love becomes an infidelity film, where Gab wantonly cheats on Joshua because she's feeling a bit of chemistry with Dos, who is for all intents and purposes a stranger to her. This is hand-waved away by hints that her relationship with Joshua wasn't going anywhere anyway, and that they should have separated earlier if they had the chance. Because love teams are everything, I guess. The film could have explained this better, but it's awkwardly done with a few lines of dialogue during the third act. Joshua is apparently characterized as controlling, but thanks to the writing, it's more clear that Gab is unable to assert herself in the relationship and is unable to communicate properly with her boyfriend, a fact that has its own share of problems. It comes across as lazy, and it's a bit detrimental to how the story resolves itself. Imagine yourself in Joshua's position, trying hard to maintain a long term (6 YEARS!) long distance relationship, but then seeing it all fall apart thanks to a random fling with a charming stranger your fiancee met at an afterparty. I'd bet you'd feel shitty too.

The rest of the script falls apart with the slightest scrutiny. I've been told that Catholic priests no longer officiate garden weddings. One of the characters experiences a cliched Potentially Fatal Medical Condition (TM) but has inexplicably earned the money for a complicated neurosurgical procedure that costs hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of pesos here in the Philippines. Said character doesn't seem to have an HMO, and good luck getting life insurance to pay that out. He amasses this small fortune in a relatively short time. What's his job? "Raket-Raket lang." Does he sell drugs? Is he a white slaver? Does he participate in the illegal arms trade? Is it related to his political connections (he is well-connected to a recently deceased mayor)? Who the hell knows? Meanwhile, a neurologist/neurosurgeon has no idea what the difference between an aneurysm and a blood clot is. I groan.

Can't Help Falling in Love drops hints about an underlying theme: the importance of marriage in a relationship. Sure, times are changing, and the definition of what a marriage is changes through that level of social evolution. There's also a notion of social media exposure causing people to make the wrong decisions. It's touched at early on in the film and I found it pretty interesting. Ultimately and unfortunately, neither of these themes are really explored.

Perhaps you, dear reader, might be compelled to accuse me of nitpicking. There's a difference between nitpicking and common sense. When you watch a film and the premise is faulty, the immersion is broken right then and there, making the rest of the film far less enjoyable. People can probably appreciate this film if love teams are everything, if they have no idea how a story works, or if they are mindlessly following Star Cinema's patented formula. That's fine, and more power to you. But films like this exist to bring our love team from one cute situation to another, ignoring everything else that makes a story a story, and I think that's kinda sad. I think it's not a sin to demand something of higher quality from these production outfits, because films like this waste the talents of the love teams working on them.