Have you ever wondered why Eddie Garcia, (with all due respect ) has the same joke tone and generic "Manoy" persona at most if not all his can't be counted movies?
Top 10 Things Wrong With Mainstream Filipino Movies
1. Most Filipino movies do not have characters, they have caricatures.
Characters in Filipino movies are usually ripped right off the pages of Scriptwriting 101 and are rarely based on real people.
There’s the Cheating Husband, the Long Suffering Wife/Mother/Female Figure, the Vile Mistress, the Kontrabida (“Villain”), the Young Ingénue, the Love Team, the Macho Playboy Action Hero, the Sidekick, the Poor Virtuous Hero/Heroine who Triumphs Over Everything, the Rebellious Teen, the Precocious Child etc. etc. We particularly loathe the Sidekick who apparently has nothing better to do with his or her life except to follow and comment on the lead characters’ lives.
2. Most Filipino movies are filled with actors and actresses who cannot act.
As a general rule, acting requires actors to know how to demonstrate a number of expressions and gestures to convey a variety of emotions. This is not necessary in the Philippines. Most Filipino actors only have one facial expression to depict anger, triumph, sadness, happiness or frustration. We call it the “OMG I’m constipated” look, because of the fact that the actor looks, well, constipated. Dingdong Dantes is a known practitioner. (Seehere, here, and here.)
And also, no, being hot doesn’t count as acting.
And also, no, being hot doesn’t count as acting.
3. Most Filipino movies do not have plots. They are a series of “quotable quotes” cobbled together to bear some resemblance to a real movie in a freaky, ugly, Frankensteinish way.
We’re big fans of “quotable quotes”, really, but a movie cannot be made up of mostly over-the-top, cheesy, dramatic lines. It’s tiring, it’s silly and it sacrifices plot for unrealistic stupidity.
4. Most Filipino movies are a rehash of a handful of plots we’ve seen ten billion times before.
You know what we need? Another unfunny romantic comedy where the guy gets the girl in the end. We seriously need another one of those.
Here’s another original idea: They can make the guy and the girl not like each other at the start, then like each other in the end. I’m sure that plot point has never been done, like, ten jillion times before, all over the world.
Wait, wait here’s the best, most original idea in the world: we can make another Enteng Kabisote film because, apparently, we hate ourselves.
5. Most Filipino movies are cheap, crappy rip-offs of expensive Hollywood movies/shows.
For added cruel inventiveness, a Filipino movie can be a rip-off of two expensive Hollywood movies/shows fused together to make one freakishly ugly baby.
If movies were people, this would be the ugly lovechild of Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives.
6. Most Filipino comedies aren’t funny.
Or they can start out funny, then the big producers would make sequel after sequel where they would rehash the same joke over and over again until it stops being funny and just becomes annoying. Case in point: Ang Tanging Ina, Ang Tanging Ina N’yong Lahat, Ang Tanging Ina Mo (Last Na ‘To), and Enteng ng Ina Mo.
7. Most Filipino dramas are unintentionally funny.
Seriously funny. They should start marketing dramas as comedies from now on.
8. Filipino action heroes.
Filipino action heroes have the following superpowers: a) they never get hit by a bullet (or anything that resembles a projectile that might actually hurt) even when everyone else around them dies; b) they attract girls whose looks and age are inversely proportional to theirs; and c) they can say cheesy, stupid “quotable quotes” with a straight face.
Case in point: Mark Lapid, the king of silly, cheesy “quotable quotes” for his acting stint in “Tatlong Baraha (Three Cards)”. Seriously, you have to give him mad props for saying this with a straight face the “OMG I’m constipated” look.
9. Our politicians star in crappy Filipino movies.
That guy holding that puny sword and wearing that “OMG I’m constipated” look is currently a Senator of the Republic of the Philippines. He is also planning to run for Vice President in the upcoming elections. We are doomed.
10. The Metro Manila Film Festival.
Umm, yea.
11. Bonus:
The worst thing about Filipino cinema today is that Filipinos, notwithstanding the general stupidity of the type of local movies depicted above, still lap up this crap. We never learn.
