JOSHUA: MMFF Review #1 - Captain Barbel: Dissappointing



Got to see one of the Metro Manila Film Festival Movies - Captain Barbel. Pretty much dissappointed. I should have known better than to expect much from a Filipino movie.



The story: It barely holds true to the history of the character. It's well and good thay made some explanation on how the barbel appears and vanishes. I think the scriptwriters didn't really think about the plot of the story, the whole movie looks like a weekly-mutant from smallville (glowing rocks appearing on their time of death and then giving them strange powers).



The characters: Enteng (played by Ogie Alcasid) was good. He was able to hold true to the character. However, Captain barbel (played by Bong Revilla) was just plain... errr... plain. I don't know if they decided to make the character really like that but I doubt it. He probably used the old superman movies as basis for his character. It's just plain weird. The villains were good, however, the movie could have given them better backgrounds and even death scenes. I had a better time watching the supporting casts.



The special effects: The movie was supposed to have 200 special effects, the audience won't be able to miss them coz the screen turns kinda moldy when a special effect is coming up. Probably something wrong with the digital editing. They could have checked this before finalizing the film.



False Advertising: Part of the reason I went to watch this movie first was that it had more superheroes than the other movies. I was wrong. It seems Darna (played by Regine Velasquez) and Lastikman (played by PJ Manalo?) was just part of a dream sequence. Grrr!



More Advertising: Blatant product placement could be seen in the movie. Milo (who's taekwondo commercial actor can be seen behind playing on one scene) and PLDT (now that scene was pretty blatant).



Audience: It was supposed to be a movie for the kids but they (the kids) were just running bored inside the movie houses. I had fun listeing to their comments. On one scene Freezy (played by Rufa Mae) was raped by her boss. A kid asked 'Mommy, anong nangyari kanya? Anong ginawa sa kanya?' The Mom didn't know what to tell the kid. Another funny comment was 'Bakit mataba si Captain barbel?'. Ha ha ha!!!



::sigh:: They could have done better.