Benedict (Vhong Navarro) is an internet DJ who specializes in love advice, but he can't get his own love life together. It all comes to a head when his girlfriend Vicky (Winwyn Marquez) breaks up with him, leaving him distraught. Bene then comes across a mysterious tavern that can grant him the power to travel to different eras.
Unli Life is a wonderfully funny film, the funniest local film I've seen in 2018 so far. Bene begins to travel through time, and his adventures could be described as a wacky cross between Airplane! and Quantum Leap. The gags are relatively well thought out, and consist not only of physical humor, but visual humor as well - it's a blast looking at the background and searching for visual gags like "Air Juan Heusaff" and the like. There is clearly effort put into the film's comedy, and it shows.
A sequence near the middle of the film is a tribute to a Filipino comedy legend, and that one is equally heartfelt. I leave it to you to discover, but it ended up being quite emotionally affecting, especially in the face of some recent films I've watched.
I've often seen local comedy films that eschew effort for and have the jokes speak for themselves, but sometimes that's not enough. Whenever I see legit technical expertise and heart put into the filmmaking as well, it elevates the material into something more, and I think nothing in this film is a better example than a lengthy sequence during the 1940's where Bene and a past version of Victoria trot through colorful vistas.
In addition to that, the film doesn't only consist of sabaw, it delivers its own important message: that help comes from within, and that we may not be able to change the past, but we can do something about the here and now. It's a surprisingly introspective note in an otherwise wacky film. They say Filipino romance films are evolving. I say, with this film (and others too), so have Filipino comedies.
1 comment:
i think maganda to promise i will watch this!
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