BFF: Best Friends Forever Review

BFF: Best Friends Forever

Starring Sharon Cuneta, Ai-Ai Delas Alas, John Estrada
Directed by Wenn Deramas for Star Cinema

I'm not a Filipino movie aficionado, I'll give you that, and recently my family has been purchasing a few recent Filipino movies so I can get in touch with mainstream pop culture. Unfortunately, despite a really strong pairing of two beloved actresses, I'm still not convinced that the once (and still) burgeoning Filipino cinema scene is gearing up for a genuine comeback.

Starring box-office heavyweights Ai-Ai delas Alas and Sharon Cuneta, BFF is a comedy that features a supremely overused plot that you'd swear you'd still hear in FM radio: A husband and wife start to feel estranged so the husband starts seeing another woman who coincidentally and without the knowledge of the husband, is also the best friend of the wife. It all starts becoming predictable now, is it? Technically, the happenings in the end, well, you'll definitely know, so it's probably the antics in between that get you revved up, am I right? Well... let's just say that they don't live up to the hype either.

Probably a lot of the issues of the movie come from the actual director itself, Wenn Deramas. I've seen his name repeatedly throughout the years, but from the movies I've seen from the man, he's developed a really stale style that simply shouldn't even stand up to scrutiny at all unless you have standards so low that you'd think phlegm on the pavement was art. I mean, his signature lies in the numerous "fast-motion" scenes and the extremely contrived dramatic scenes that try to actually make a character three-dimensional, and to utter failure at that. Probably most every comedy movie the guy directs has this frantic mood that's irritating, to say the least.

He relies too liberally on the speed adjustments of whatever editing software they use, and he overuses sound effects and music that could've worked better in an FM radio show than an actual feature film. It's not because they're technically unsound, I mean, if they were used correctly they'd make a comedic scene more effective or a dramatic scene that much more emotional. Unfortunately, they just make these sort of scenes seem fake and contrived. Honestly, in this movie, less really is more. If Sharon was given the benefit of not having to have accompanying stock piano music while she was crying (fine, I spoiled a bit of the movie, but you'd expect it anyway), the scene would've become that much more powerful. Sharon knows how to act, that's a given, but her ability is made to look like the same second-rate trying-hard bituing walang ningning she's famous for 'being'.

As for the actual comedy, well, it consists of the same visual, slapstick and crudely 'obvious-cized' humor that once in a while is funny, but for the most part, falls short.

It's a bit of a letdown for people who are expecting a script that's actually smart (because Cuneta has been known to pick great scripts lately), but for the mainstream audience, it's pretty standard fare even for them. Even the cameo at the end isn't really enough to make up for the bland movie since the trailer's made known the shape and form of the mystery man, which also equals failure for the marketing department. If they didn't reveal that special cameo, the movie probably would've had even more word of mouth than thought imaginable, because seeing the two together is actually a bit of a big deal.

Too bad then that the movie is not very good.

Rating: 5.5/10