Be happy, this one’s a good movie

Don’t worry, I Wanna Be Happy is a good movie, and marks writer-director Jose Javier Reyes’ return to a modern comedy of Pinoy manners, definitely leagues away from his more raunchy concerns of Live Show from several years ago. This latest film will, however, stir no hornet’s nest between art and pornography, though questions raised on dysfunctional family life may be just as provocative.

Fine ensemble-like acting carries Reyes’ witty and clever screenplay that involves three generations of a family, although understandably it is the olds who save the day. Eddie Garcia and Gloria Romero play a couple nearing their golden wedding anniversary who suddenly go through a trial separation, to the consternation of their three children, Joey Marquez as the widower dentist; Cherry Pie Picache as the long-suffering wife alternating between kitchen and charismatic group and Diana Zubiri as the youngest daughter living in with her photographer boyfriend in a neat condo, and from whose eyes the story may well be told.

Romero and Garcia, as expected, are in their twilight best as they engage in repartee worthy of theater and keep things humming, as their somewhat confused kids themselves nearing middle age (except for Zubiri) try to make sense of the changes about them as soon as lola walks out on lolo after a seemingly mundane discussion about a tubero, and moves in with her younger, recently widowed sister hilariously played by a rotund Marissa Delgado.

And the apos, the grandkids, act as sublime foil to all that grownup and geriatric angst, as they too try to convince lola to move back to the old abode, but not quite as hard as the middle generation’s attempt to broker a reconciliation. The youngster actors may at the moment be faceless, but that is only because they may be overwhelmed by the veteran thespians around them. In their grownup years, they may look back on this movie and say they once acted with the great Garcia, the great Romero.

This may be a coming-out film for Zubiri, who in the past was limited to cutie pie roles that would call for her to bare her considerable assets in string bikinis. She’s still cute, but there are now varied nuances to her facial expression, something, which shows like Bubble Gang, only hinted at. Reyes knows how to get the most and maximize his actors’ potential, and Zubiri comes through admirably and does not disappoint.

Picache as we have long suspected is a soon-to-be-great actress, if she isn’t already. The critic Nestor Torre was raving about her and had planned to write about her based on a trilogy of movies – Ako Legal Wife, Kaleldo, but the third one at the time was still in the making. Now lately there’s been Manay Po! and this one, and it seems there is no stopping her winning streak, no limits to the roles she can play, from wife number two to a tomboy, to a mother of gays to a dutiful daughter with a philandering husband.

Perhaps the weakest link in the chain is Joey Marquez, due in no small part to his irritating voice that suggests that he may have wept too much as a kid. But the guy is a natural comic, and this the director Reyes capitalizes on, and what we get is neither the former Parañaque mayor nor the retired basketball player and reputed lothario nor the sit-com regular, but a regular guy skilled at underacting who is best when he is unobtrusive.

Not to forget either the star turn made by Keana Reeves as the kalaguyo of lolo, and who practically upstages everyone during her limited time onscreen, including the olds. Here the Visayan accent is not only funny and amusing, but in Keana’s case endearing as well because devoid of any cheap tricks.

If we can fault Reyes for anything, it could be for conservatism, because somehow everything hews to the morally straight and narrow in the end. Which is not to say that it is necessarily a happy ending, because as the title suggests, happiness is both a state of mind and the power and wherewithal to will one thing.

If adultery is a most conventional way of being unconventional, as per John Updike, then I Wanna Be Happy is a most unconventional way of being conventional as far as Reyes’ work as director is concerned. We wish the filmmaker was a little more creative with the soundtrack, maybe unearthed a half-forgotten chestnut like Culture Club’s Love is Love, but that is neither here nor there. Or even everywhere, for that matter, because the rest is only nitpicking.

It’s one of the best movies we’ve seen so far this year, despite the dizzying close-ups, because something can still be said for the artless and unpretentious.