"Enteng ng Ina Mo" (MZ, Octoarts Films, and APT Entertainment) is just too much, an excess, that it is not anymore amusing but simply toxic to the mind and spirit. That this movie is the "second best" in the Metro Manila Film Festival this year is a big riddle for me. I watched "Manila Kingpin," the grand winner, and I cannot fathom the distance between the best and the second best. It is a wide—as wide a universe maybe—and dark laughing space.
This movie is a fusion of two MMFF movies—the "Enteng Kabisote" series (there are four) and the "Tanging Ina Mo" series (with three). Directed by Tony Reyes, the story is written by Danno Kristoper Mariquit and Lawrence Nicodemus. The screenplay, or a semblance of it, is written by Mariquit. I am just glad that Wenn Deramas has nothing to do with this movie. Or else it would undo whatever artistic success he had in the three "Tanging Ina Mo" movies. Or maybe "Enteng ng Ina Mo" would have been acceptable if it was directed by Deramas.
I was never a fan of Vic Sotto. I never watched the "Enteng Kabisote" series because I found them corny. I only watched "Enteng ng Ina Mo" because my editor wanted me to write a review. And indeed, the movie is corny. The plot is too brainless and the acting are bad. It only confirmed my belief that Sotto cannot act. At the most, he is overacting. The great visual effects, except for the Shrek-like giant kontrabida because it is simply stolen from a Hollywood movie, were put to waste.
Eugene Domingo as Ai-Ai delas Alas' sidekick is still funny. But today Domingo is definitely a bigger star than delas Alas. The former is more beautiful and well-dressed than the latter. Even if delas Alas won the best actress award last year for the third installment of "Tanging Ina Mo" series, in this latest movie her performance is simply embarrassing, and I think it is the director factor. Her antics became excessively ugly and corny like that when she is crying by the Baywalk after hearing the news that her favorite PSG, played by Piolo Pascual in the last movie, was killed in Afghanistan.
I am really bothered about Domingo because this movie is just a repetition of her performances in the three "Tanging Ina Mo" movies. As early as this she appears to have nothing else to offer the audience anymore. Her performance is just pure money trip. She has to stop this or else she will self-destruct and put to waste her reputation as a versatile and bankable actor.
What I hate most about this movie is its homophobia. Aiza Seguerra as Enteng Kabisote's daughter is a tomboy, therefore I assume is a lesbian (because not all lesbians are tomboys). Alwyn Uytingco as Ina Montecillo's son is flamboyantly gay but impregnated someone when he was still young. The tomboy and the gay dislike each other so much. But the movie ends during the Christmas party of the two families and unexpectedly, Seguerra throws up and everyone discovers that she is pregnant and the father is Uytingco! Both families are shocked at first but immediately realize that this is a blessing. So everyone is happy again.
This is nothing but crap. It reinforces the patriarchal—the male chauvinist pig—belief that a gay person's "abnormal" sexual preference can be corrected by having a "taste" of the opposite sex. This kind of belief would make fathers force their teenage sissy sons to have sex with prostitutes to cure their homosexuality. This also encourages macho society to rape lesbians to make them "real" women.
I am not saying that a gay and a lesbian cannot or should not love or have sex with each other for sexual preferences can sometimes change. But to make this situation something to laugh about in a blockbuster movie for children is very, very wrong. It is simply too much.
"Enteng ng Ina Mo" is just like that—enteng ng ina mo! Of course I'm saying this with all due respect and with much apologies to all the mothers in the world. —KG, GMA News
