Wednesday, August 22, 2018

WHY WE FILIPINOS FIND PINOY ROM-COMs MEMORABLE


Romantic Comedy flicks or Rom-Com is the usual movie genre we see in our local movie industry. What draws us to watch Rom-Com flicks and what compels the movie makers to make more? Here are the reasons why we love Pinoy Rom-Com flicks:
Starting Over Again BlogCon

The tandem / love team: Everyone has a favorite movie pair or what we locally call love team. It makes the movie marketable because they have the fans’ support. It takes more than looking good to entice the fans. It also needs onscreen chemistry to make sure the audience will feel the romance among the pair. The fans are not easily fooled. So if they can’t feel the romance, the movie’s an epic fail. Some of memorable examples of a good tandem were Claudine Barretto and the late Rico Yan in the movie “Got To Believe”; Marvin Agustin and Jolina Magdangal in “Hey, Babe”; and the Sarah Geronimo and John Lloyd Cruz tandem in their Rom-Com trilogy (A Very Special Love, You Change My Life, It Takes A Man And AWoman)

Quotable lines: A good Pinoy Rom-Com flick has the unforgettable lines that will be memorable for weeks to come. It all depends on the mind of the screenwriter or screenwriters to immortalize his or her script make a Rom-Com memorable. It took a lot of research or writing skills to gather all these pick-up lines. One memorable Rom-Com flick that has lots of quotable lines is from the movie, “My Amnesia Girl”. It has a list of pick-up lines that is so cheesy but you can’t help but laugh every time.

Scenic locations: Rom-Coms are also memorable because of locations that make the audience want to go to these travel destinations like the movie, “That Thing Called Tadhana”. It features the travel destinations in Northern Luzon. Recently, I watched “A Day Before Valentines” that shows different locations in the island of Lanai, one of the Hawaiian Islands.

Pinoy Rom-Coms are good to watch all year round: During the season of Lent or Holy Week, local broadcast channels on free TV is either showing programs relating to Holy Week or they showing wholesome movies and some of these movies are Pinoy Rom-Com flicks. A friend told me that she watched “My Bestfriend’s Girlfriend” many times on a Holy Week.

The most memorable moment of all in a Pinoy Rom-Com flic is how the captive audience can relate to the movie: Movies like “That Thing Called Tadhana” and “Starting Over Again” are one of the memorable movies that made their audience cry because most recall the pain of breaking up and moving on.

Our Pinoy Romantic comedy flicks can be compared to its Hollywood counterparts. It’s just as intelligent and entertaining to watch and both have the same standard and level of creativity. Maybe, one day, Hollywood will start adapting our Rom-Com to their audience. This is written by someone who used to think that romantic comedies are too girly and guys should only watch action flicks.