November 12, 2021
After a long break owing to pandemic restrictions, Esther (Mickey Ferriols) invited her very good friends Wylo (Arnell Ignacio), Ason (Liz Alindogan) and Amparo (Jamilla Obispo) to get-together and play their usual rounds of mahjong at her house. Occasionally, Esther's pretty chef daughter Alexa (Angeli Khang), her problematic common-law husband Leo (Jay Manalo) or Amparo's driver Gaspar (Sean de Guzman) would take turns to play.
Sex, not mahjong, was the priority of the film, and it was all just out there, with no effort for subtlety or artistry. Most of the action in Alexa's bedroom (who never locked her doors) or in Amparo's spacious mini-van. There was even one daring scene literally on the mahjong table. These encounters just happened totally randomly, with no build-up whatsoever to make sense why the hook-up had to happen. This lack of logical motivation would hound the film up to its over-the-top ending.
Ingenue Angeli Khang gave it her all for her feature film debut in a lead role. While her delivery of lines and acting skills were obviously still quite raw, she had no qualms about baring her ample bodily assets and the camera was really showing everything up close. Bold as she was, her innocent face still looked so vulnerable, certain sensual scenes (especially the gratuitous shower scene and those squeamish molestation scenes) felt very uncomfortable to watch.
Despite the dad bod, Jay Manalo still exudes lasciviousness as effortlessly as he did back in his heyday. Jamilla Obispo shows that she still had the allure she had when she made her debut in director Law Fajardo's first skin flick "Ex-Deal" (2011). Sean de Guzman does what's expected of him as the lusty stud du jour of 2021. It seems theater actor Tad Tadioan just reprised his role as a strong simpleton in TP's play "Katsuri" for his role here as Big Boy. Mickey Ferriols, Arnel Ignacio and Liz Alindogan barely even mattered in the main story at all.
With the names of Law Fajardo as director and Byron Bryant as screenwriter, I expected more from this project than this poor final product. Despite the mention of mahjong in the title, the games did not really matter. There was disappointingly nothing much that happened when the games were ongoing. We hardly even see the action of the tiles on the table while the boring characters were humorlessly chatting away about their mundane lives. So much potential for provocative conversation or exciting strategizing here, as it was in "Crazy Rich Asians," but this did not materialize. 1/10.
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