Why ‘My Paranormal Romance’ barely works

It began as a funny movie for sure, and I couldn’t help but have high hopes for it, but after the first 20 minutes it was clear that “My Paranormal Romance" was biting off more than it could chew. Or maybe it just didn’t know how to wield the comedy and the hyperreal into one rational narrative. Or maybe it didn’t know that what the paranormal in any film or text requires, what any fantastic or speculative kind of fiction demands, is still logic no matter that it’s bigger and crazier and an extreme version of what we know to be logical. So at the risk of stating the obvious, the fantastic and hyperreal must be able to carry us through and allow us to get lost in a narrative that we know to be untrue if not impossible. This is what’s lacking in “My Paranormal Romance", a failure as a movie of fantasy within an alternate universe. It’s in that sense that the wonderfully funny and tongue-in-cheek beginning, the pockets of humor and gags in the rest of the film, the pretty good lead acting and spotty but good writing, all went to waste.

The movie begins funnily enough with a girl, Merry (Phoebe Kaye Fernandez) who, battered by love, was ready to focus on becoming more than mediocre: she was enrolling in the Super Hard University (SHU) and was so focused on passing the entrance exam that she moved to a new boarding house and started burying her head in books. But she was walking into a house of the paranormal, that is into the life of a landlady with a third eye, Edwina (Publio Briones III), and three different ghosts who have yet to crossover to wherever it is they’re supposed to go. Right here was a comedic and promising first 15 minutes of a film. And then by the quirk of a refrigerator falling from the sky on Edwina, Merry inherits the third eye, begins seeing ghosts and dead people, promptly forgets SHU, and goes on a search for a way to remove the third eye. But of course it is easy: someone else wants the third eye in the person of Edwina’s twin brother Edgar (also played by Publio Briones III). So suddenly a kontrabida was in place, and so was a love interest in the person of scam artist Lucas (Van Roxas) who pretends he knows how to get the third eye removed. The movie then stretches into Lucas and Merry becoming friends and finding love, as they survive Edgar’s plans of killing Merry by poisoning her and getting a cursed bra to squeeze her to death. Then Merry and Lucas expectedly fall in love, and as we all know, everything can be survived with and solved by love. Such was this story’s ending, such was its point—though it did try to be funny and say “kilig" instead of love. This might be the thinnest plotline ever, which would’ve been fine were the comedy and hyperreality able to carry it through to its expected end. But the comedy happens on the level of puns and quips that aren’t consistent throughout the narrative, and the possibility of comedy given bras with their own minds, refrigerators falling from the sky, a man who sings off-key, a scam artist who’s so obviously such, ghosts with their own personalities, a conscience that functions as both counterpoint and guardian angel, quickly become old in the course of the movie. Which isn’t to say I didn’t find myself laughing at the film, especially in the beginning. There were bright spots in this script, but they happened in bits that were just too easy to piece together into one narrative and didn’t do justice to the absurdity that was here. As such, as the movie wore on, it actually did wear on, and felt like a real plodding through to an ending that barely did justice to the creativity, and talent, that was here. Because there was talent here for sure. Briones did two disparate characters so well that it was easy to forget one actor was playing twins. Roxas was effective not just as the scam artist, but even more so as the guy thrust into the life of this girl who had just become paranormal. But it would be Fernandez as Merry who will have you wrapped around her little finger, her portrayal consistently an extreme version of what a lead female protagonist in a romantic comedy has become in these shores: with Fernandez, the anti-heroine is funny and absurd, the exaggeration believable and true. Given these three it was clear that this movie wasn’t lacking in the acting department; given the highlights of the comedy that was here and the language that was utilized by the dialogue, it proved it had some bright spots, too. But these two cannot be all that makes a good movie. Because this movie might have had conflict given that third eye, and it might have had a climax in Merry being bound to a chair by Edgar, ready to give up on her newfound love for Lucas and her life in general. The point might have been to refuse to be more complex than being a story that wanted to insert hyperreality and fantasy into the run-of-the-mill commercial romantic comedy. But all these things do not validate the kind of utter simplicity that’s in “My Paranormal Romance", where everything falls from the sky literally and figuratively, people are saved in the nick of time, and nothing is difficult at all. For a movie that wanted to deal with the most absurd of alternate realities, everything here was way too literal, and there was nothing in this that could’ve been real: life and love, in fiction and otherwise, can never be this easy. Even more so when the romance is paranormal. “My Paranormal Romance" was written by Diem Judilla and directed by Victor Villanueva for Cinema One Originals 2011. – KG, GMA News