Review of ROADTRIP: Fractured Female Friendship

January 18, 2024

Four women had been close friends since their college days. Sophia (Candy Pangilinan) was the bossy type who made plans and decisions for the group. Chiqui (Carmina Villaruel) was a popular actress who was a paranoid clean freak. Maricar (Gelli de Belen) was always frank and blunt, which got her into frequent conflicts with the other girls. Gigi (Janice de Belen) was the serious and quiet one of the group, who did not join in their fun too much.  

When a common college friend of theirs passed away, the four finally got back together after years of frustrated reunions. They decided to go on the hike of Mt. Pulag that they had all been wanting to do since their school days, but never got to do. With Sophia at the wheel and controlling their trip itinerary, the ladies reminisced about the old times, opened up about their current situations, and why they had not been together again all these years. 

We only get one short scene where we meet the girls as college students and see their past interaction -- Yumi Garcia as young Sophia, Heart Ryan as young Chiqui, Ashtine Olviga as young Maricar, Abby Bautista as young Gigi and a fifth member of their friend group, Jastine Lim as young Frances. I felt this one scene was not enough for us to know each girl better and how close as friends they actually were. This scene ironically ended in an argument.   

The rest of the film we just watch the ladies in their middle age already, whining and arguing practically all the way from Manila to Benguet. At first, it was fun to see the four veteran stars having fun together on the big screen, and, in fairness, they actually hiked up Mt. Pulag. However, all the noisy, over-the-top, perimenopausal bickering they were doing was frankly not to much fun to watch anymore in the long run.

The screenplay was written by Candy Pangilinan (her first) for herself and real-life close friends (the two De Belen sisters and Villaruel), so the naturalness of the banter was there. This could have been told as a straightforward story, but Pangilinan instead employed a twist in the third act to raise the emotion impact of the ending. However, there were a couple of red herrings purposefully shown which rendered this twist rather unfair.  6/10.

SPOLERS FOLLOW (Stop here if you have not yet watched the film.)

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From the very start, you can already feel that one friend is always separate from the other friends, that she was not included in the conversations. As the film progressed, there was a scene where she was actually having a normal-look one-on-one conversation with someone else. A little later, one of the friends actually addressed her by her name, asking her why she was crying. This only meant that they actually saw her there with them.