JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Photo: Mat’s monster face.

Review of Star Cinema’s Villa Estrella, directed by Rico Maria Ilarde and written by Rico, three other people, and a creative producer, by the kid sitting behind us in Glorietta 4 cinema.

Mommy sana Ice Age na lang ang pinanood natin. (Mommy, we should’ve watched Ice Age.)

Child, I feel your pain. When you get older you won’t be as generous.

*****

Is it unreasonable to demand that a big-budget studio product be entertaining at least? We’re not asking for Art or the Meaning of Life, we just want to be diverted for 90 minutes.

Well if we can’t get entertainment from the movie, we’re just going to have to entertain ourselves. While sitting through Villa Estrella it occurred to us that the movie was just bursting with possibilities, both as a sex-thriller and a screwball comedy. However we noticed that every time there was the slightest whiff of a tinge of a hint of sex or humor the filmmakers would slam the door in our faces like a horrified Mother Superior. So Vivien (not his real name) and I took the plot elements of the movie and rewrote the whole shebang.

Plot elements (You can’t really call them Characters)

Cute girl in short skirt/shorts and push-up bra (Shaina Magdayao)
Cute girl’s cute boyfriend (Geoff Eigenmann)
Cute girl’s abusive father (John Estrada)
Cute girl’s abusive father’s best friend and business partner (John Arcilla)
Cute girl’s hot ex, the son of her abusive father’s best friend and business partner (Jake Cuenca)
Mysterious girl at haunted resort (Maja Salvador)
Extremely vivacious child with leg brace at haunted resort, just like the kid in The Orphanage
Extremely vivacious child’s mother who is not Ai Ai de las Alas
Village idiot caretaker at haunted resort (Ronnie Lazaro)
B-movie Mumu

Our rewrite:

Abusive father John forces Shaina to go to Villa Estrella with her ex Jake. Although they’ve broken up he’s still a dish so she jumps him and feels guilty later. This way when horrible things befall her she feels she deserves them. (That is called motivation, an element the writers forgot.) Unbeknownst to Shaina and Jake, the real reason their fathers John and John are so close is because. . .they’re lovers! Of course!

Geoff worries about Shaina so he follows her to Villa Estrella, where he gets possessed by mysterious Maja and starts embracing and kissing caretaker Ronnie. It turns out Maja can possess any body she wants to, which kind of makes the B-movie Mumu redundant, but we mustn’t waste the creature design so the B-movie Mumu rapes the Johns. Later Maja possesses Geoff and he seduces Jake (My co-writer is gay) then Shaina walks in on them and in her fury turns into the B-movie Mumu. And because there’s so much body-switching going on, everyone forgets which character they’re playing and general boinking ensues.

Now I would pay to watch our movie.

Wait, you ask, what about the extremely vivacious kid with the leg brace and her mom who is not Ai-Ai? Ah, forget about them. The movie certainly did—two-thirds into Villa Estrella, with their stories unresolved, they take off and we never see them again.