Undercover laughter & calculated mayhem

Star Cinema’s opening salvo for 2007 brings back the team behind the surprise hit of yesteryear, D’Anothers’ director Bb. Joyce Bernal and leading man Vhong Navarro. The film is a spoof of all those Filipino secret agent/spy movies of the past decades, and it dutifully rolls out veteran actor, Tony Ferrer, the original Agent X-44. There’s calculated mayhem, extreme physical comedy/choreography, witty asides and a functioning, but one-dimensional script. Along with Vhong, the cast’s mainstays include movie novice Mariel Rodriguez, Cassandra Ponti, Mura, Epy Quizon, Julianna Palermo, and stealing every scene she’s in as the Spy School directress, comedienne Pokwang.

The film opens at the Philippines’ premier spy school, and as soon as the students dutifully display their facility with languages and Vhong shows off his fluency in "Ngongo," we know what kind of movie we’re in. As head teacher, Pokwang is a bizarre Adolf Hitler wannabe with matching pidgin German – just like Ramon Zamora in TV’s Super Laff-In of the ’70s. The threadbare plot has to do with the recovery of Lapu Lapu’s bolo, as stolen from a museum by a gang of gays. The next day, students on a field trip discover that a hairdryer has been left in place of the bolo and we overhear one child ask, "Bakla ba si Lapu Lapu?"

Mariel shows a surprising willingness and enthusiasm for babaw comedy and that’s great, because it comes as such as a surprise when placed against the context of her "cool" looks and demeanor. Pokwang’s energy is downright infectious, while Mura also makes amore than favorable impression. Vhong is Vhong, and no one in our local movie scene comes as close as he does to being our version of Jim Carrey.

The script aims for low-brow broad jokes and asides, and the humor is principally derived from sight gags and visual comedy. Besides the gang of gays led by John Lapus, there are slaves and catamites, a posse of vampires, sumo wrestlers and Japanese ninjas and a tribe of thieving Amazons. The choreographed action sequences are entertaining, but I thought some brisker, tighter editing would have improved the film’s flow. I also didn’t much like how farts as humor became a recurring theme and not just used once. But that’s just me, the audience was lapping it up, and that augurs well for the Bernal-Navarro tandem. Agent X-44 merrily chugs along, knowing that it’s mainlining broad comedy in a manner that ensures its success.