March 17, 2024
The Boys at the Back (or BATB for short) was a group of notorious for being high school students at the Kinantong National High School. They were infamous for being in fourth year high school for four years now. The muscle-bound leader was Mike (Michael Berces), and his knucklehead minions included Arnold (Bob Jbelli), Porkchop (Nyle Libranza), Jerome (Raynier Brizuela) and tomboyish Cayang (Merry Chris Rodriguez).
This semester, a new freshman kid Kevin (Noel Comia, Jr.) transferred into Kinantong from a private school La Naval. His first friend in his new school was Joyce (Nicole Omillo) with whom shared a love for Filipino pop music. One day, Kevin's iPod fell out of his pocket and was confiscated by his teacher, Mr. Robert Dimasupil (Bani Baldiserri). Desperate, Kevin thought of asking BATB to steal the iPod back, in exchange for helping them graduate.
This film was all be silliness and shenanigans on the surface, with scene after scene showing naughtiness, truancy, bullying, disrespect, and failing grades. All of these were dealt as a laughing matter, with a juvenile sense of humor which may come off more as annoying than funny. However midway, it would catch you completely off guard when it revealed that deep within, there lay very serious triggering topics of suicide and sexual abuse.
Noel Comia Jr. is already a veteran in indie films even in his young age, and here he proved that he still had what it takes for the drama scenes, especially those with his mother (Dovee Park). Pretty and perky Nicole Omillo was a surprise winner of Best Supporting Actress even with her limited screen time. The five actors playing the BATB tended to play things just for laughs, not recovering even in the end when they were supposed to be more mature.
One of the more remarkable awards Boys won was Best Story and Screenplay award for director, writer and star Raynier Brizuela. However, I felt that this screenplay just presented a lot of open threads, but none of them really had closure at the very end. Those who were waiting for the villain to get his due comeuppance will wait in vain. There was no satisfying sense of justice at all the very end. We don't even see Kevin's iPod ever again. 5/10
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