Vice actually

Netnet Camomot

WATCHING “Beauty and the Bestie” right after “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” is dangerous to one’s health. Why? Because you can’t help but compare. And once you’re comparing… Dios ko day! Does beauty even have a bestie script?

But any movie starring Vice Ganda of course has its funny parts where you would laugh like it’s the funniest scene ever. Let’s say, it has its moments.

As for Coco Martin as Vice’s love interest in the movie, I can now understand the connection after seeing a photo of Martin as Paloma in “FPJ’s Ang Probinsyano.”

JaDine’s role in the movie is to provide the kilig factor in between the comic reliefs, enough to convince you that this pair is indeed the most phenomenal among the present batch of love teams.

There’s Hollywood, and then, there’s Pinoy. The films churning out of Hollywood have almost unlimited budgets while the Pinoy ones have, hmmm, limited budgets, and that could be the reason behind the humongous difference between the two when it comes to quality. But there are great Pinoy movies like “Heneral Luna” which could encourage your jaws to drop to the floor and stay there even after end credits have rolled as you continue to talk about the possibilities of a well-written script, and the commitment and dedication of a cast and crew in producing a movie that’s worth watching again and again.

If there’s a negative side to Pinoy movies, it could be this “alleged” penchant of producers to focus on what the Pinoy audience wants, treating them like duh showbiz fans who would find it funny to watch Vice walking in high heels where he had stuffed his presumably bloody and wounded soles into. Sole as in feet, not soul as in spirit. But that’s where I was laughing so hard, proving that these movie producers are perfectly in sync with their ideal Pinoy movie formula. And if that makes me duh, so be it.

Everyone in this oh so cruel world needs to laugh hard, like as if his life depends on that one good laugh to help him move forward, because there are times when Vice’s crazy antics are the only forms of entertainment he can fathom. That’s why Vice is popular and, if I’m not mistaken, I think even Kris Aquino–the Queen of All Media–surrendered to the expected No. 1 status of his movie before the Metro Manila Film Festival could start churning out its entries in theaters nationwide. Well, there was chika about ticket-swapping–you buy tickets for one movie and are given the other movie’s tickets–but that’s one case of innocence until guilt is proven.

Despite Vice’s funny scenes, though, there’s this feeling of, uh, Am I wasting my precious time by watching this? You could be reading Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace,” inventing a new gadget that can banish the Apple empire to another galaxy, or stopping a nuclear war, but there you are inside a Philippine mall cinema, watching Coco Martin as he’s about to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on Vice. You cringe, you squint your eyes, you struggle to stay in your seat as you wonder if this is the time to quit and declare, Enough already!

But you choose to stay, in case there’s one more funny scene, say, a Kris-Aquino sound-alike barking out words that only she could pour out into the wild. And, indeed, the next scenes don’t disappoint as a Kris-Aquino sound-alike starts to bark out words… And the rest, as they say, is history. But wait, was that before or after the early-warning-deviced resuscitation? Gosh, how to remember a movie that looks as unscripted as an AlDub kalyeserye? That’s the question.

If there’s one movie that you should watch again and again, it’s… Ah, no, not any of the “Star Wars” prequels and sequels–only an avid fan has an excuse to do that. The movie that you should watch forever and ever is “Love Actually.” Sigh. Alan Rickman, one if its actors, passed away last week, and while his fans focused on his role as Snape in “Harry Potter” films, there I was, seemingly the only one saying, Actually, it’s “Love Actually.”

If “Beauty and the Bestie” has that one moment of Vice in heels, “Love Actually” has those many moments that keep you going back for more. Makes you fall in love not with Mr. Right Now but with the movie itself. Hey, that’s one simple relationship right there–dating a movie! Make it simple for it’s not complicated at all.