Love on the rebound
XIAN Lim and Kim Chiu come into their own as mismatched rom-com couple.
Kim Chiu and her new screen consort, Xian Lim, play initially mismatched lovers in Joyce Bernal’s latest rom-com, “Bakit Hindi Ka Crush ng Crush Mo,” based on Ramon Bautista’s “instructional” book on love—and how to survive its low blows.
True enough, both stars portray bruised survivors of failed romances. After predictably feuding and fighting for a spell, they eventually make peace and agree to help one another—he will teach her to become a tough love-survivor and effect her makeover from ugly duckling to fashion-forward swan; she will turn his family’s failed recording business into a smashing success!
Trouble is, they don’t bank on falling for each other, so when it happens, they are caught with their figurative pants down.
This is where author Bautista, cast as a peripatetic and omnipresent cab driver, steps in to give them (and the movie audience) periodic “tutorials” on the art and crafty craft of falling in love without actually “dying”!
On the plus side, director Bernal is able to infuse the flick with a wry, sardonic sensibility that makes its predictable plot premises and progression more viewable than they would otherwise be.
She’s also able to elicit relatively more vital and engaged portrayals from Kim and Xian—and that’s such a relief. Other droll performances are contributed by Mylene Dizon and a few more cameo players, including the fey actor who portrays Kim’s gay sibling (EJ Jallorina).
As for Bautista’s “love tutorials,” some of them edgily hit the spot, and his “Cupid as a cabbie” recurring character provides the movie with a sort of stabilizing fulcrum and running gag that it surely, sorely needs. It’s all tongue fiercely in cheek, of course, but hey, on a rainy night, it’ll do just fine.
On the other hand, the production has a storyline that’s too gaunt to hang a raincoat on, much less an entire feature film. While they were at it, couldn’t the movie’s writers have come up with a more robust and eventful development for its “two victims of love helping and further hurting each other” nutshell or fingernail conceit?
True, director Bernal can be relied on to sweetly, sassily turn an ordinary plot premise into a fun evening at the flicks—but hey, even crafty cinematic prestidigitators have their limits!
With a more juicy and eventful storyline, this Bautista-Bernal collaboration could have become the season’s compleat date flick, not just tickling viewers with a knowing wink or two, but actually sharing something significant about why it’s become so hard to find true love at a time when it’s craved for and veritably worshipped as the decade’s new deity of delight!
The fact that the film stops short of that indicates that much more needs to be done before current cinematic Cupids lose their cynical reputation for—cupidity!
Still, we’re grateful to Bernal for finally lighting a thespic fire under her two young leads, thus helping them come into their own as effective rom-com performers. Yes, their characters here are all too reminiscent of some of Sarah Geronimo and John Lloyd Cruz’s past “mismatched-couple” team-ups, but they’re still able to get in a few hearty licks of their own. So, there’s still reason to hope that their next team-up will finally, really, truly hit the sweet spot!
