Phenomenal trip to the top

MENDOZA. Most successful YouTube discovery.

BEFORE THE month is over, “Eat Bulaga’s” stellar AlDub tandem will be celebrating its first anniversary in show biz. It’s been quite a phenomenal trip for Maine Mendoza and Alden Richards, and the heady roller-coaster ride to the top isn’t over, not by a long shot.

Opening in only a few days’ time is the love team’s first stellar costarrer on the big screen, “Imagine You and Me,” which they shot last month in Italy. If the rom-com flick turns out to be a big hit, it should further energize the tandem’s stellar prospects for the longer term.

That alone will be a boon for AlDub, but we’re hoping that Mike Tuviera’s fond tribute to “fated” love will also turn out to be a good movie. That would be a big, bright bonus—and go a long way in “proving” that AlDub deserves all of the success it’s been enjoying for a full year.

In any case, Maine and Alden have had their best year ever, both together and separately. In particular, Maine Mendoza is the biggest beneficiary of the phenomenal reception that AlDub has been savoring. Less than two years ago, she was an “absolute nobody” who just loved to “dubsmash” spoof snippets of songs, lyrics and TV-movie dialogue. Her big ace was the fact that she didn’t keep her penchant and fetish to herself, but shared it on social media with the televiewing world.

Early snippets

Watching those early snippets a full year after the fact, we try to figure out what she “had” that made her stand out from many thousands of other amateur “sharers” on social media. We think it’s Maine’s unique combination of youth, good looks—and ability to make fun of herself!

Unlike some other pretty women, she didn’t focus on her looks but on her comedic and spoofy bent. And she looked like she was having such a whale of a good, uninhibited time—that viewers found themselves laughing along with her!
That’s a key point that other pretty, young starlets and wannabes should keep in mind: If they stop at “pretty,” that’s no big deal, because there are hundreds of lookers out there, so they’ll get lost in the wall-to-wall “generic” pulchritude.

Like Maine, they have to look for —and find—their unique plus factor, what makes them different, and focus more on that than on the “photogenic wallpaper” effect.

It would also help if, like Maine, they didn’t take themselves and their “image” quite so seriously. Maine may be pretty, but she’s also ready, willing and able to make herself look silly just to make viewers’ day. This ability to think of the viewer instead of herself is another unusual gift that other determined comers should cultivate in and for themselves.

In the thespic trade, this is called “irreverent acting”—the intentional desire to not look good and predictable and obedient, all of which are passive traits, and therefore not exciting, interesting and “accessible” to viewers.
The performer who looks for the unexpected, the unglamorous and even the outrageous is much more vulnerable than the usual, polished performer, so viewers embrace them and delight in their performances!