June 26, 2021
Rich girl Sam (Andrea Brillantes) was the captain of the pep squad of the snobbish exclusive school Rosehill Academy. However, she was also notorious for being naughty prankster and a heartless bully to the less fortunate. To teach her valuable life lesson she badly needed, her dad Luis (Alfred Vargas) forced her to transfer on her senior year to a public school, the Philippine State University or PSU, his own alma mater.
From her first day, Sam encountered much resistance from her new classmates, specially since she used to say harsh things about the PSU pep squad when she was still in Rosehill. However she met a poor but earnest boy, campus photojournalist Jake (Seth Fedelin), who tried his best to help Sam around the campus and adjust to the radically different way of life in PSU, as her father likewise curtailed all her privileges like credit cards and driver.
The scenario of a rich girl-poor boy romance is very old and familiar, a formula frequently rehashed in various films from all over the world since the silent era. There was "Titanic," "The Notebook," and even animated ones like "Aladdin" or "Lady and the Tramp." Of course, a number of interchangeable Filipino rom-coms have tackled this very same scenario starring possibly every teenybopper or young adult love team throughout the years.
The central conflict is very predictable so there wasn't really very much suspense about what was eventually going to happen. The good poor boy falls in love with spoiled rich girl and vice versa, of course, sooner or later, their wide financial gap was going to get in the way of their budding romance. Of course, parental intervention is inevitable, as per the usual plots of this sort. Being a rom-com, the fairy tale ending was pretty evident from the get-go.
However, director Benedict Mique was somehow able to sprinkle this oft-told story with magic pixie dust that made it fresh and fun to watch. At first, Andrea Brillantes's Sam was a milder shade of bratty Marga from her "Kadenang Ginto" TV series, but there was something special with her sparkling chemistry with Seth Fedelin's charming Jake that made even the whole thing so enjoyable and winsome. Even with cliches and all, this will make you smile. 7/10.
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