March 7, 2025
Jessa Baluarte (Maris Racal) was a real estate agent. Ray Cruz (Anthony Jennings) was a financial adviser / insurance salesman. Soon after they met, they hit it off very well, and soon began to lived together. Everything was going on fine until one day, one of their investments went south, and they realize that they have been scammed. They were now millions of pesos in debt to everyone in their condo building they had sold that investment to.
At that same time, Jessa was trying to sell a big piece of land in an exclusive subdivision, so she asked Ray to clean the house with her. Their rich neighbors the Montecillos (Carmi Martin and Bart Guingona) thought that they were the new owners, so went over to welcome them. Quick-thinking Jessa thought that they could use this situation to earn back cash. She introduced themselves as wealthy married couple, Penelope and Kiefer Regalado.
In the past two films I had seen Maris Racal in -- "Marupok AF" and "And the Breadwinner Is..." -- her characters had been scammers. In this one, Racal plays one yet again, this time as a resourceful salesman who with a golden tongue which can spin the most elaborate lies right off the cuff. She can play a rascal, yes, but one with a winsome charm that makes you easily forgive her shenanigans when she batted her "repentant" puppy-dog eyes at you.
This role of Rey is the biggest lead role in the career of Anthony Jennings. Recently, his career is closely tied up with Maris Racal in both film ("Breadwinner") and TV ("Incognito"), and they did have good chemistry together, despite what scandal the tabloids reported. Jennings' Kiefer had earnest scenes with art dealer Mr. Tecson (Ricky Davao), where he was able to stretch his acting range out of the rom-com mode. Too bad that he had more silly scenes to do.
Co-writer-director Jason Paul Laxamana wanted us to take such a big suspension of disbelief that these two amateur con-men were able to fool an entire village of gullible multi-millionaires just like that. I know that what they did should have consequences, but I wish they did not totally forget Rey's talent in visual arts. That talent was a legit way out, we hoped Rey would still be able to use. Sadly, Laxamana did not bring it up anymore at the very end. 4/10
No comments:
Post a Comment