Julia is an uptight IT executive in a general merchandise warehouse. Spencer is a laidback delivery boy for Healthy Eats diet service. One stormy day when the eye of Supertyphoon Ligaya crossed Metro Manila, the two of them were trapped inside the warehouse together after everyone else had left to go home. With the rains and floods outside and power outage inside, Spencer entertains Julia to keep their minds off their scary predicament.
Three years ago, director Ice Idanan made her feature film debut in a quirky indie romance "Sakaling Hindi Makarating" (2016) (MY REVIEW). In only her second feature film, idanan goes mainstream with a rom-com starring two A-list movie stars. To be completely honest, the story only worked because of the two lead stars Jessy Mendiola and Arjo Atayde, whose dazzling smiles, infectious charisma and extreme likability rendered each scene passable, no matter how corny or cringy the lines or the situations were.
The stunts Spencer was doing inside the warehouse, opening all the merchandise and rearranging them to fit the scene he wanted to recreate, were all so awkward. Wearing a snorkel mask while paddling a surfboard over bubble wrap looked stupid. Toppling down lit candles causing curtains to burn was reckless. Yet in the very next scene, Julia consented to lying down inside a tent with a man she just met. Again these scenes had a semblance of cute only because it was bedimpled Arjo Atayde was doing them.
All the scenes that transpired after the storm were all felt problematic. Did Julia really have to make her big announcement during their dinner with their parents? She had so much time alone with her fiance, in their condo or food tastings they went to before that dinner. Drama queen much. Why did Spencer give up just like that after one unsuccessful call because the other phone had a dead battery? He could have easily called that number again the next day, and the entire outcome would have been different. Cop out much. The final scene simply came from completely out of nowhere with no proper setup at all, as if just appended as an afterthought.
Despite being set in the present day in the big city, "Stranded" is very much a fairy tale. Nothing like this will ever happen in real life. The very premise of this film only works because the two characters involved just happened to be very attractive people. In real life, there was no way a girl who looked like Jessy Mendiola will warm up very easily to just any other delivery boy, except perhaps this one who happened to look like Arjo Atayde. In fact this same exact scenario can easily turn into a crime film or even a horror film, depending on which actor was cast as Spencer. 6/10.
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