Room for improvement

DOMINGO. More misses than hits on TV.

Some of our stars and shows are doing OK, but there’s always room for improvement. For instance Eugene Domingo’s movie career is going great guns, with three  of her starrers showing before the year ends—but, she still has to really figure out why her TV career isn’t going as swimmingly, with more misses than hits scored in recent seasons.

As for Maricel Soriano, Eugene’s costar in her new zany big-screen comedy, “Momzillas,” it’s great that she has a comeback movie this season, but she has to make sure that, this time, she makes it as a mature performer, rather than simply reviving and “re-heating” her successful shticks, tics and tricks of yore.

If she comes up with new and more age-appropriate ways to delight both old and new movie fans, she’ll be on easy street. However, if she keeps falling back on her past signature gimmicks, like her ack-ack dialogue delivery, she’ll just be opening herself up to bashers’ snide remarks about her living in the past and not being able to keep up with the changing entertainment times. —We hope she makes the right decision!

What about Billy Crawford, who plays Maricel’s son in “Momzillas”? He’s successfully moved on after the termination of his long romance with Nikki Gil, and it’s good that he has a new film showcase for his emerging comedic persona, which he’s been honing on his daily noontime program, “Showtime.”

But he and his cohosts on that show have been playing it too easily and messily, having themselves too much of a good time, occasionally leaving viewers out of their “private jokes” loop—and feeling like chopped liver! So, it’s time for him to remind himself that all this frenzied entertainment should be for and about them!

In addition, he ought to realize that he isn’t getting any younger, so it’s time to really hustle—and to make his performance style not quite as silly-putty as it’s been.

After all, he did great in Europe once upon a time, and that says a lot about his talent and work ethic. So, it could do him a lot of good to revisit that golden chapter in his career, just to remind himself of how good he was and still can be, if he becomes as ambitious and focused as he used to be.

Finally, Andi Eigenmann is cast as Billy’s fiancée and Eugene’s daughter in their current movie, so her career will get a boost from its hopefully successful run. It’s also encouraging that she has a new “fantasy” teleserye in the works, “Galema, Anak ni Zuma,” in which she portrays—a snake-woman!

Despite these strong gambits, however, Andi still needs to convince some show biz observers that she’s become serious enough about her career to finally make a big go of it. After all, she made some erratic and jejeune decisions in the past that led to the temporary derailment of her TV-film career.

So, she’ll have to work harder to convince naysayers that all of that is decidedly in the past, and it’s now all-systems-go for her—for the long term!