Girl, Boy, Bakla, Tomboy: Movie Review

You may think that "Girl, Boy, Bakla, Tomboy" is going to be an awesome experience knowing that Vice Ganda is at the helm and even better, there's actually four of him in the film. Four times the fun right? Sadly and rather quite bluntly, the actual film is very far from that. Jokes fail to inch out any laughter 90% of the time, the story is a bloated mess and the lead character struggles to cope with his other personas well. "Girl, Boy, Bakla, Tomboy" is such a mediocre film that it is monumentally appalling to see, hear and feel.

Years ago, Pete (Joey Marquez) and Pia (Maricel Soriano) bear quadruplets as children. When Pete needs to go to the United States, his evil mom decides to take 2 of their babies away from Pia. Pete gets custody of the heterosexual pair of Girlie (Vice Ganda) and Peter (Vice Ganda) while Pia gets the homosexual pair of Mark (Vice Ganda) and Panying (Vice Ganda). As fate would have it, each of the quadruplets have their own sicknesses and Peter in particular has a failing liver. Pete decides to go back to the Philippines and find the other pair in the hopes that one of them might have a matching liver and save Peter's life.

"Girl, Boy, Bakla, Tomboy" mightily struggled to keep us interested the whole time it was up on the big screen. Not even halfway through the film, we wanted the suffering to end but it kept on with a very long running time that almost took two hours to complete. What made this a horrendous experience is its shoddy makeup of convoluted scenes, tasteless and tired jokes, blatant advertisements segments and bad acting. Minus its moralistic and grounded plot and superb production values, not much can be said for "Girl, Boy, Bakla, Tomboy".

The film bills Vice Ganda in four different roles but Vice struggles to make his acting and jokes work on each and every persona. The best would probably the girl persona and to no surprises the gay one. The boy and tomboy personas are a complete mess. You could feel how Vice Ganda is completely lost and clueless and how to make these two work. Plot wise, the film was okay. It's generic at best but it actually had some interesting things going for it but the film was over-extending things too long. Some scenes are completely unnecessary and two hours is just too much given how light the material is. As a side note, Maricel Soriano is the only shining star in this film and you could actually see how her acting is leaps and bounds better from everyone else. In the end, the honest truth is that "Girl, Boy, Bakla, Tomboy" is the typical money grab film. One that puts the biggest star on the billing and knowing that it will sell millions no matter what, does not put effort to everything else.

Rating: half reel





Why you should watch it:
- there's really no reason to watch this except if you want an instant headache and a feeling that you wasted two hours of your life

Why you shouldn't watch it:
- the comedy is a complete fail in all levels
- Vice Ganda's personas are unevenly acted

Image Source: Bryan Bonifacio