Produced by Viva Films, Booba casts Rufa Mae as a nitwit barrio lass who is forever hated and envied by her evil twin sister Ai-Ai de las Alas.
Casting them as sisters (twins at that) – to me – is riotously funny. Unfortunately, the wicked character played by Ai-Ai in the movie doesn’t see it that way. To her, the fact that she is less gorgeous than her sister is no laughing matter. She is therefore consumed with hatred and anger for Rufa Mae.
One day-out of sheer jealousy – Ai-Ai makes an attempt on the life of her sister. This wicked plan, however, is foiled by Gina Pareño, who plays their equally bosomy grandmother. After this incident, the bad seed is quickly banished from home.
But Gina Pareño eventually has a change of heart. At her death bed, she admonish Rufa Mae to got to the big city to look for the wayward twin sister. And this is the part where the rib-tickling scenes begin.
On her way to Manila, Rufa Mae feels frustrated when the boat leaves without her. She solves this problem by asking a couple of boatmen to bring her to the city in their small banca. In the next scene, there is a title card that is superimposed across the screen that says Three Years Later and we see Rufa Mae in the banca with the pair of boatmen still paddling away.
There are more hilarious scenes that come after this – really inventive scenarios that would put your faith back in Philippine comedy.
All of a sudden, there is a feeling of isolation. At long last – after a long, long time – an intelligent Filipino comedy:
But the euphoria is short-lived because – as the song goes – some good things never last.
By the middle part of the film, the comic scenes run out and the once delicious comedy flavor of Booba all of a sudden turns boba. Such a pity because it was off to a great start.
I really don’t understand how it happened. Maybe, the creative minds behind the movie were in such a hurry to finish it. Or maybe, they simply just ran out of ideas.
But in spite of the half-baked result, I still want to commend Booba’s young director, Joyce Bernal, for the wonderful first half of what could have been a brilliant comic film.
Written by Luchi Cruz-Valdes and shot with the help of researcher-cameraman Cesar Apolinario, Bubungang Pangarap tackles the problem of housing (or rather, the lack of it) here in the Philippines.
This award-winning documentary was first shown in late 1999, but was aired in a special I-Witness edition last Monday at 9:30 p.m.
Bubungang Pangarap takes the viewers in a tour of the squatters’ areas in Metro Manila to check on how the inhabitants there are surviving given their squalid surroundings.
One of the districts in Manila visited by Luchi Cruz Valdez in this episodes is Tondo where she sees a makeshift wooden structure hanging from under a bridge. The house – if you can call it that is like a chicken coop. It’s height is no higher than 3 feet so people have to crawl to get in. Right below is an estero that serves as a very wide toilet for the inhabitants above.
In Balintawak, Luchi and her crew discover a house on top of a tree. No, it’s not a fancy play treehouse, but a dwelling made of scrap materials that provide shelter for a family whose members survive by begging for alms.
The dwellers of the Balintawak treehouse are actually luckier compared to this man who makes a living by picking up and selling to recycling outlets discarded plastic cups. This man no longer knows how it feels like to have a roof on his head because for the past several years, he has been sleeping in a wooden pushcart with his now pregnant wife and their child.
At the Payatas dumpsite, there is this other man who survives by picking up trash. On lucky days, he even finds jewelry and wristwatches in the heap of garbage where he and his family have also set up their shanty.
For their meals, they pick up rotting vegetable in the trash. But they are careful when they cook the discarded produce – making sure they bring it to a boil to kill all the germs that may have contaminated it.
One time, they found morcon in the garbage which they refried in boiling oil to make it safe for them to eat.
And then, there was this other time when they found a whole pata (must have been a discard from a hotel) in the trash. What a feast they had that day!
Mercifully, no one among them has gotten sick yet – knock on wood – after eating all those leftover food from the garbage.
Bubungang Pangarap also shows us the professional squatters in Novaliches. One of them owns a piggery and even operates a tricycle and a jeepney.
And then, there is this professional squatter who rents out for P700 a month 11 units (count them) to other homeless folks. On the side, he rents out a wide karera machine, another illegal business.
Bubungang Pangarap, perhaps may be likened to an Architectural Digest of the squatter’s areas. But instead of making us chose the designs of homes that we like, it gives us a clear picture of the people who deserve our help and compassion.