Limited format hobbles talent tilt

ALDEN RICHARDS

THE NEW novelty talent tilt, “Lip Sync Battle Philippines,” got a boost recently when it got Alden Richards to join the competition, performing “against” Jerald Napoles.

From the very start, it was presumed that the studio audience would make Alden the winner, “by avid acclamation”—but the good news is that Jerald put up a good “fight.” Even better, Alden didn’t take his superior popularity for granted, and performed his heart and guts out.

Emotional overload

The show started rather tepidly, with Alden doing a merely nominal send-up of Justin Bieber’s “Sorry.” Jerald’s “retort” was a really funny spoof of Alden singing one of his signature anthems—and mawkishly breaking down, unable to finish the number due to “emotional overload.”

Even Alden found the spoof funny, and a good time was had by all.

On the tilt’s final round, Jerald went “all the way” and performed a la J.Lo with full cross-dressing, t*ts and a**—and ended the hot number as “naked” as a jaybird.

JERALD NAPOLES

More inventive

Trouble was, Dennis Trillo did the same thing some weeks ago—so, the production should be more inventive and not Xerox itself.

For his part, Alden went out on an unfamiliar and (for him) reckless performing limb, and did a rock number, complete with long wig, tattoos, etc.
All told, however, it was still Jerald who scored the highest performing and spoofing points—despite the studio audience’s “shamelessly” biased decision.

The Alden-Jerald square-off was a high point for the relatively new show—but, what will it do for an encore?

If “star value” is the name of the game, what happens if future guests fall short of the mark in that subjective regard?

The show can’t bank on big star value to keep attracting viewers, but must work much harder to become popular on its own merits and appeal.
Given the limited and limiting nature of the lip sync battle format, good luck on that.