On Filipino Movies: Why We're Not Watching

I read an interesting article today by Jessica Zafra where she said, "Abandoned by their cinematic artists, Filipino audiences are doomed to watch the same movie over and over and over again."  Well, I do watch Filipino movies, most of them, the indie ones, and most of them are not really interesting, I just watch them, to support them.  It's even rare that any of these indie movies get into my year-end favorite lists too.

I do watch some mainstream Filipino movies but not that many.  Last year, only Kimmy Dora was interesting to me.  The rest, well, Jessica Zafra describes it eloquently.  What makes it worse is that the popular actors are just products of a TV channel's publicity campaign.  I don't think they're even good actors at all, but of course, that does not really mean anything to producers.  They just need the bankability and the box-office draw.

I could cite some reasons why I don't watch too many Filipino movies, mainstream or otherwise -

1.  I don't want to watch movies about our poverty unless it has a unique treatment.  The "poverty porn" which Western audiences love does not interest us.  I just have to open my window everyday and I see the poverty staring back at me.  I don't need a movie to remind me of that reality.

2.  The stories they are selling are just not interesting enough.  If I can watch that on TV, why spend so much money going to a theatre to watch it!  Shockingly, like Hollywood, our local producers are also running out of ideas!  I don't know why they don't trust the younger generation enough.

3.  They still use that love team as audience bait.  I grew up with that as a marketing tool - they are still using it now.

4.  I know we're just moving movies, but most of the local ones are not even intellectually stimulating.  Most of them are just being made for adults with a Grade 4 educational level.  So why waste my two hours on that type of writing?

I did watch My Amnesia Girl, the top box-office movie last year.  I tried to enjoy it but it was tough to watch. The audience I was with were laughing with it.  Something is wrong with me.  For me, it was funny for the first ten minutes but they just repeated the same pattern of jokes until the movie ended.  The jokes just kept repeating themselves, I wanted to puke midway into the movie.