“Of All The Things” review: A problem only a loving heart can fix
Fixing documents is not a fun job. You beg, steal or borrow to get things done. You wheel and deal. It's not for the faint-hearted nor the slow poke. It's for the street smart and the gutsy.
But sometimes, the very good fixer is a loser in the most important aspect of it all: her life.
Bernadette or Berns (Regine Velasquez) has the guts and the connections to seal expensive deals in the romantic comedy "Of All the Things." She sidles up to senators, congressmen, political bigwigs to make things happen.
Ironically, there is something she can't fix: her love life.
Her mother (Gina Pareno) pairs her with a guy but Berns thumbs down her mom's choice. Berns is too stuck on work to care. Her motto is, to any problem, there's a solution.
She's wrong. A fixer can only go so far. He or she can't solve long-seated personal problems — like lack of self-esteem, which lawyer wannabe Umboy (Aga Muhlach) has in generous doses. Here lies the rub.
The weak and the strong
He is weak while Berns is strong. In the movie, these two polar opposites don't realize how much they need each other.
Their saving grace, is like all Filipinos, they have families who care deeply for them. You don't need long dialogues to know that Umboy's dad (played by Tommy Abuel) wants the best for his son but feels so guilty he can't express it outright.
Like all Pinoy machos, Umboy's dad needs help from the emotionally stronger fairer sex. Talk of woman empowerment. "Of All the Things" is brimming with it—from opening to closing scene. After all, the director, Joyce Bernal, is a woman.
But the movie considers the male point of view as well. It shows why Umboy's self-esteem vanished into thin air. Most of all, "Of All The Things" proves that not everything is lost.
Aga and Regine may be older than John Lloyd Cruz and Bea Alonzo of "The Mistress" fame. Aga and Regine may have gained extra pounds since their last team-up in "Pangako… Ikaw Lang" 11 years back. But the chemistry—which Regine has described as "sexual tension"—has remained.
Their reactions to each other are knee jerk. You feel like a peeping tom intruding into a loving couple's private moments, "the conversations no one hears", as a line in the song "Of All the Things" says.
And then there's the music — an old, familiar Dennis Lambert original today's generation can view on YouTube.
The theme song is a good marketing strategy that can gather non-You Tube and You Tube generations in one cinema house. Moms and dads can recall their salad days; young people can check out social media to listen to "Of All the Things."
It has worked before. Let's see if it will work again.
