A MOVIE REVIEW, Sort-of Anyway: PARA SA HOPELESS ROMANTIC

UPDATE: Please make sure to read the Comments, you'll be surprised at how fans have unlocked the mysteries

I've always watched Pinoy films on DVD. In effect, Para Sa Hopeless Romantic is the first Pinoy film that I watched in a cinemahouse. Out of curiosity, I've already read a film review which turned out to be "scathing" but like most Pinoys, I don't take as gospel truth the usual media commentaries, be they may be artistic or political. They mostly come out as pretentious pieces out to pull the gullible to the mindset of the writer who is out on a limb to do a hatchet job unless his target fits into his or his sponsor's imagined standards.  Like the review I read, it was more reflective of the dubious psyche of the reviewer than anything else. That's the problem, his standards were just his  psychological pacifiers to his own pretensions. Clearly, the standard for viewing a teen film is a different banana altogether.  Diary ng Panget, a much-criticized film when it was released here last year, is the most popular Pinoy film internationally if you base it on Asiatic film viewing patterns from the time it was released on October 2014 (I based this on the two biggest Russian sites which give numbers of viewings per a given period of time, while in the Spanish sites, the viewcounts are absent but it was the most raved upon until all the comments  were deleted, as related in the following article,).The second biggest film is Talk Back & Youre Dead (not released in Spanish), another critical hatchet job victim in the Philippines. Both were box-office hits, nonetheless. Though he just arrived on the international scene late last year, the star of these two films , James Reid, has the most number of fans among the Asian actors in the Russian Facebook, having 5 times more fans than Daniel Padilla, the so-called Pinoy Teen King himself, and easily surpassing the big well-funded publicity machines of other Asian stars. He did it by his plain charisma.

I wonder if somebody was out to torpedo that charisma, however. Outside the cinema, they posted a scarecrow. Definitely, the star attraction is Jadine so why  there was another picture, prominently displayed on level with Jadine's, of two other stars with proven boxoffice flops is beyond me. Who were they trying to entice when these non-stars have nothing to show? Try this experiment: display the most tempting piece of cake on a counter... but if there's a fly hovering, see if the buyer is not turned off...

Then in the movie itself, why did they have to artificially color James Reid? I once read Western comments ridiculing the artificial coloring of Piolo Pascual in the film "Manila" during its showing in Cannes. This ridiculous artifice was obviously partly born out of the pseudo-intellectual arguments about Filipinos being "dark-skinned" (a very outdated political concept), partly because of the other pseudo-commercial fallacy that pangmasa pandering works all the time, as if the masa has resigned itself  to being dark-skinned and beyond aspiring to be stimulated by a more pleasant beauty standard. Wrong on both counts, it only destroyed the cute face of James Reid that the fans came to see (my companion said "Yuck, it's too early to experiment with the successful formula, the fans are still in the kilig stage with him, Jadine is only a year-old").



One often hears one should be proud of his own skin. Fine, but that doesn't guarantee everybody will be proud of you lurking around because not everybody will put up just because some self-appointed intellectual du jour declared it to be trendy. So many Miss Universes have been Black, a US President was actually Black, but the world is turning, and an emerging East is rising and... there... yes, there, they are insisting on racial purity, that they are beautiful because they are white too (though the rest of the world call them Yellow). Back to square one in the racial polemics but the debate rules have changed: one says white (yellow) is superior, no need for explanations.... no matter the facial features. The good thing is that the future world will not be dictated to by a single voice so it means the accepted definition of beauty will remain. The existence of unlimited points of comparison for beauty in the flesh or social media will ensure beauty will remain as beautiful as before.

So in an emerging patrician world bent on glorifying white skin (Oriental version), would insisting the Pinoy should be dark-skinned lead to the acceptance of dark skin finally or will it just lead to the usual deepening of inferiority complex of the Pinoy, not among Westerners this time, but among its Oriental neighbors who happen to have less attractive features. Why shouldn't we just build on the fact we have better features &  insist instead that the Pinoy shouldn't be painted into a corner as  being merely dark-skinned...  & try to overcome it instead if one is not comfortable with his own skin? Many have done so. I myself grew up the darkest but I'm  fair by any measure now. I made a choice, not because I was living up to the expectation of others, but I saw I looked better (though I find olive skin is sexier in some physical types): meaning, a Pinoy masa shouldn't be trapped into accepting he can only be dark, he might just have other ideas, and what right does a pesudo-intellectual have to second guess what are the true aspirations of the people. People are more important than his outdated political concepts about skin color. And most people, we now know, are racists,  even after decades of racial polemics. And it is clear they will always will be, especially in the new emerging world centered in our neighborhood. It will be to our advantage, therefore, that we remain the best-looking in these parts so we shouldn't trap ourselves in defeatist political polemics about skin color..

I don't consider as colonial mentality the appreciation of the mixtures of races, including Caucasian, in a multi-racial country like the Philippines. Despite their historical transgressions, one has to admit the Westerners had beautiful genes left behind in the Philippines.  It is no longer Caucasian anyway but the mixture has produced a more beautiful version of the Asian. While I'm sure there are beautiful pure Asians, both Mongoloid & Malay  (I don't use the term  Austronesian anymore), a vast majority of both races are not really beautiful so they will never become parameters of beauty, and saying that is not really to offend them because that is a reality-based truth (just look around, be it in Samar or in Hongkong or in Tokyo or Seoul) which everybody just got to learn to accept anyway. Just like anybody having to live with being stupid and dumb, one just has to accept the other hard facts of life and live with it and move on, sans delusions.

So what's the good of faking the color of James Reid's skin? To look like masa so that more masa could identify with him? Or could it have been better if  the aspiration of the teenage masa to have a cute dreamboat was strengthened instead? If these teenagers were enticed to aspire for the best bags & shoes, why not let them aspire for the cutest dreamboat & not somebody who looks like the guy in the corner? Why should they pay a ticket to aspire for that, why not just walk & stalk the corner? Why can't Nikko (James Reid's character)  be a Tisoy, has anybody not seen a Tisoy in the barrio or squatters area? True, not as common, but being common is not enough excuse to dampen the enthusiasm. It could have given more kilig to the fans. That's the point of the whole exercise anyway.

Returning to the film, it could have been more successful if they just focused on the core fans of the genre and ignored the pa-intellectual kibitzers. The latter are not intellectual enough anyway. In short, kilig is the end-all & be-all. The "trouble" with viewing a popular teen love team is that you have to put up with a lot of screaming in a packed room. It was fun, though. Following the run-up to the showing, my assistants were talking about some sectors wanting to wreck the Jadine team (there were three alleged  "surveys" prior to the showing where the Jadine team was supposed to be running a poor third- and that was in a website under one of the producers, a very foul move because they were supposed to be busy promoting the team, and here they were effectively, & publicly, undermining the love team (nobody really believes these suveys so why do it except to create a false narrative, a common propaganda ploy). There were earlier announcements that James Reid was to be paired to another actress in need of a love team, lamentably, a lesser beauty and of even less pleasing quality altogether,.  But Jadine is the most famous Pinoy love team worldwide so give it time to mature. Diary ng Panget 2 will step up the next narrative.

Needless to say, I liked the film. It felt good feeling like a teen-ager again.

Read also:
 1. EATING ONE"S OWN BABY
 2. Hmmm.... Strange... : Just Another Sabotage?
 3. THE "DIARY NG PANGET" & "SHE'S DATING THE GANGSTER" MYSTERY: They Don't Want Pinoy Teen Flicks To Shine In The Limelight (They Sabotaged Them Instead !!!)
 

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