Bite-sized romances for appealing quartet

REID AND LUSTRE. Reunite in their most coherent starrer to date.

In its previous films, the love team of James Reid and Nadine Lustre wasn’t served well by romantic starrers that were glossy but a little hairy at the cinematic heel. Andoy Ranay’s “Para Sa Hopeless Romantic” is far from perfect, but while it has its share of fan-hooking excesses, its story is more coherent and better told than “Diary ng Panget” and the deliriously disjointed “Talk Balk and You’re Dead”—with lovely Julia Barretto and Iñigo Pascual in tow.

Rebecca Sebastian (Lustre) is a flawed but fetching screen heroine JaDine fans can rally behind—she’s a promising writer whose broken heart manifests in the intense and ever-evolving romantic yarn she spins: She’s stuck in the dark recesses of her grieving heart! She can’t imagine a storybook ending for the star-crossed protagonists, Maria (Barretto) and Ryan (Pascual), of her story—because, as she stresses, life is no fairy tale!

To Becca’s dismay, Nikko (Reid), the culprit responsible for her inscrutable moodiness and gloomy countenance (he inexplicably broke up with her many years ago), also goes to the same university—and, worse, he’s as dreamy as ever!

Disconnected from the wired world around her, Becca’s only soothing sources of excitement are her anonymous exchanges with a fellow vandal, who writes romantic messages on her armchair in class! Can the mysterious stranger be the Mr. Right she’s been praying for?

Ranay delivers a giddy serving of romantic fluff—which is par for the course in teenage crowd-pleasers these days. But, with its conflict failing to generate genuine tension, the film fails to sustain its viewability.

Exuberance

Some scenes in Andoy’s otherwise glossy productions may not always seem logical (after all, some are inspired by poorly written fan fiction), but it’s hard to find fault with the confident exuberance he injects into them (think “Sosy Problems”)—and “Hopeless Romantic” is no exception.

Effectively playing to James and Nadine’s thespic strengths, the first half of this feather-light rom-com is its strongest stretch, as it shuttles between Becca and Nikko’s romance and the bite-sized fable involving Maria and Ryan.

Soon after, however, the film gets mired in clumsily staged romantic sequences utilized to tie up the narrative’s loose ends before the big wrap-up—with student activists in the backdrop!

The movie doesn’t require a lot from Reid and Lustre, but benefits from their appealing albeit contrasting personalities. In future projects, perhaps their handlers can make James less brooding and Nadine less sulky or starry-eyed for a change—because that’s what they’ve been doing since Day One?

In a deliciously wicked incarnation of her maldita and contravida screen persona, Cherie Gil is a hoot as JaDine’s haughty college professor. Ditto the delightfully camp Shy Carlos, as Nadine’s BFF.

Julia and Iñigo are limited by the brief and cursory nature of their characters’ love story-within-a-story. Iñigo is no slouch at acting, but needs time to “hone” his matinee-idol tricks to sustain viewers’ interest in his character—and characterization.

For her part, Julia is a big-screen find. She can hold the audience’s rapt attention with her photogenic face and refreshing, larger-than-life presence.

Handled well, hers is the kind of talent and looks that would light up movie screens, as soon as she’s ready to seize the spotlight from Tinseltown’s current screen queens!