January 6, 2025
Bamboo "Bambi" Salvador (Vice Ganda) has been working multiple jobs in Taipei for 15 years, regularly sending money and goods to his family back home in Arayat, Pampanga. He had a widowed Momshie (Malou de Guzman) and three younger siblings, namely Biboy (Jhong Hilario), Buneng (Maris Racal) and Boy (Kokoy de Santos). Biboy was married to Mayet (Gladys Reyes), and had two kids, Danda (Kulot Caponpon) and Argus (Puge).
Bambi had been receiving updates from his family about the house he was asking Biboy to build for them. So this year, Bambi decided not to renew his contract and booked a flight home to surprise everyone on his birthday. However, he was dismayed to discover that there had actually been no new house built at all. Worse, all the money he had been sending home went to failed investments, and their old house had been mortgaged to pay off a debt.
The story should be very familiar to Filipino moviegoers, many of whom have members who have been overseas workers. It is quite well-known that the family back home depended so much on the earnings and gifts of their parents or siblings working abroad, so much that the OFWs have to take on extra jobs and shifts in order to comply with all the family expenses and requests. Even if the OFW willing takes on this responsibility, this is an unfortunate reality that is still prevalent even if it had already been tackled in several previous OFW-themed films.
This movie is Jun Lana's unsubtle way to tell these families to wake up to the plight of their relatives working their bones out abroad. Bambi's dramatic highlight was a monologue saying that he (and others like him) need to rest once in a while. In return, the family back home have to make sensible investments to make the money grow. Watching Biboy et al making all sorts of lame excuses, and even have the gall to throw spite at Bambi, was appalling to watch. We hope they serve as mirrors to reflect to those concerned how ugly this behavior looked.
Lana also threw shade on OFWs who go abroad only to abandon their relatives back home when things do not work out as planned, like Bambi's eldest sister Baby (Eugene Domingo). Lana also brought up the issue of how desperate people would resort to scams to gain money not rightfully theirs. This part of the story was disturbing as it may sound like they were even rationalizing the crime, especially with that cutesy persuasive speech by Maris Racal (who coincidentally also played a scammer in another recent film, "Marupok AF").
Despite the generally melodramatic premise of the film, Lana did not deny Vice Ganda fans his signature brand of slapstick comedy that they were expecting in his MMFF comeback after a 2-year hiatus from films. During the Taipei scenes at the start of the film, we see Bambi's silly interactions with his co-workers Jovie (Lassy) and Mikha (Petite). We get to see Vice dressed and made-up in a number of his past film characters (Praybeyt Benjamin, Girlie Jackstone and Gandarra) in ironically outrageous ways to remain incognito. 6/10.
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