Finesse & a fairly pleasant surprise in AlDub film

Film review: Imagine You and Me

MANILA, Philippines – If you have covered showbiz for over 30 years, you realize you have to deal with films that edify and films that are the opposite.

You cheer the good films and you feel the letdown when they are not patronized by the so-called masa now called the mainstream audience.

Indeed, some movies are made to entertain one wide and encompassing sector you can’t find in the concert hall.

Indeed, some movies are tailor-made to suit popular love teams and some movies dare risk but with certain consequences for the producer.

Some producers fast-track to take advantage of the immense popularity. As a result, they please the fans but drive away the curious who leave the theater feeling they have been taken for a ridiculous ride, so to speak.

One doesn’t belong to that school where they apply intellectual yardstick for movies that will never be everything but intellectual.

But watching Mike Tuviera’s Imagine You and Me featuring the phenomenal AlDub love team is — in some measure — a fairly pleasant surprise. It adds to one’s education of the movie audiences as they evolved through the years.

Indeed, it is not easy figuring out in a premiere night where you have to literally “part the sea” to get to the entrance of the theater teeming with screaming fans of Alden Richards and Maine Mendoza.

The way to the theater is a big sideshow by itself. From the ground floor to the third floor of SM Megamall are thousands of fans cheering the love team.

Why they have that phenomenal following only after a few weeks of noontime kalyeserye (street soap opera) is beyond me but that is something for cineastes to look into in another film study on the evolution of film audiences.

The first few seconds of the film are already a revelation with ordinary people falling for each other at first sight in the MRT station and in highway toll gates. It is a subtle front act before the main pair is shown going to the airport on their way to Italy.

It is another variation on love and fate and destiny all right but the narrative flow proves pleasing even for those who can only be curious about AlDub.

But to add to one’s surprise, the setting is that village popularized by Lake Como where famous opera composers like Verdi and Puccini took some time out finishing or re-writing their opera opus. The love team even got to Verona where some kilig scenes where shot in the statue of Juliet (from the Romeo and Juliet literary fame).

On the whole, direk Mike made something highly sensible and substantial out of the popular love team of Alden and Maine in their first solo starrer.

Beautifully shot with the legendary Lake Como in Italy as romantic background, the movie is highly appealing with the thoroughly fleshed out character of Andrew (Alden) who rediscovers love in the person of a wacky character named Gara (Maine) who is everything he is not.

As it is, Alden stands out as the broken-hearted Andrew whose transition — from being down and depressed to one finally able to move on — allows one to see a bit of the actor in him. It is a big relief from his perpetually smiling profile (dimples and all).

Maine is a fairly spontaneous, if, lovable Gara. But at some point, Maine looks more like an accidental tourist than an OFW. She probably had to look like a tourist or else the producer will suffer the brunt of the fans.

The acting ensemble of Cacai Bautista and Cai Cortez keeps the audiences in stitches while the appearance of Irma Adlawan as Andrew’s stepmother gives the moviegoers a brand of acting that is at once marked and profound.

The movie has everything AlDub fans will like but one takes his hat off to direk Mike for imbuing the love team with much sense and sensibility with new characters that are more believable than their previous film outing.

By and large, it is a relief to see some semblance of good acting in the country’s most popular love team. Direk Mike toned down a lot of acting clichés and the film ends with such magic that even non-AlDub fans can identify with.

Imagine You and Me is now showing in more than 200 theaters nationwide.