Bad Movies

My favorite journalist, who does movie reviews for a spreadsheet, described Star Cinema's A Very Special Love as a series of romantic scenes put together to make a movie. Now For the First Time is described as "pretty". She writes: "KC Concepcion is pretty. Richard Gutierrez is pretty. Greece is pretty. The Richard Prince bag is pretty." Followed by: "Then the movie has a nervous breakdown, and everything goes to hell."

What comprises a good movie, anyway? And how important is a good plot to a movie? Is it enough to make the viewers "kilig" or is it also important to instill something and somehow influence them with the movie?

Movie producers have been giving us romantic movies with bad plots. Why? Because these kind of movies are the ones that make more money. Good movies don't make that much money. Look what happened to Judy Ann Santos' self-produced Ploning. Didn't get much attention.

Big producers only care about making money. And as long as we patronize bad-plotted but full-of-kilig-moments movies, that's what they will continue to give us. They can spend millions to shoot abroad, they can spend big money for the everyday shooting fiesta, because they know people will watch the movie no matter how bad the story line is; that they will get their money back threefolds.

I hope people will think twice about spending a hundred or so pesos for a movie with merely kilig moments rather than a good plot. Because patronizing something bad will make matters even worse.