Hayop Ka! The Nimfa Dimaano Story (You Animal!): Movie Review

Even with all the controversy behind it recently, we want "Hayop Ka!" ("You Animal!") to succeed. The film is a technical marvel with its animation and is truly a showcase on what our local artists can do. But nothing can save it from its very simple and one-sided characters and narrative - that have no redeeming values or whatsoever.  

Nimfa Dimaano (Angelica Panganiban) is a pretty cat who works as a perfume sales lady at a department store. Her boyfriend is Roger (Robin Padilla) who works as a janitor and already happy and satisfied with his standing in life. But Nimfa wants more and when she meets Iñigo Villanueva (Sam Milby), a super rich business dog, their chemistry ignites. Who will Nimfa choose? Roger’s unending love or Iñigo’s unending riches?

Taking years to make, it seemed like much of the effort in creating "Hayop Ka!" was put into crafting its world of parody. If you're a Filipino viewer then every scene will be oozing with inside jokes that it was actually as amusing as the animation itself. Speaking of the animation, this is the strongest asset for "Hayop Ka!". The colorful and vibrant environments and palette make every scene stand out and the 2D animation had the perfect mix of feeling nostalgic and modern at the same time. The voice acting was good but not great. While the voice actors themselves handled the script well, there's just this feeling that the visuals and audio didn't match up 100%. Unfortunately, the film had poorly-written characters and narrative. It was too simple to the point that the characters themselves were one-sided and extremely flawed. The characters do "bad things" and there's little chance for them to redeem themselves given the film's running time of 98 minutes. We understand that this is a raunchy comedy but putting non-redeemable characters just for the sake of being in tone with its theme was a bad decision in our opinion. Overall though, "Hayop Ka!" at least had excellent comedy and visuals that will make you laugh - just don't expect to get anything else from the experience.  

Rating: 2 and a half reels

Why you should watch it: 

- it's a technical marvel in terms of local standards

- has some witty and fun comedy within it

 Why you shouldn't watch it: 

- there's no likable or redeemable characters here

- the narrative was shallow