Kimmy Dora: Ang Kiyemeng Prequel doesn’t really work as a prequel. Besides the simple fact that the movie keeps using contemporary references like
Sisters Kimmy and Dora Go Dong Hae (Eugene Domingo) have just finished their schooling. Their father Luisito (Ariel Ureta) asks them to join the company, but he has them starting from the bottom. The sisters get to experience a bunch of different jobs in the conglomerate, from parking attendant to security guard to call center agent, all in the hopes of learning how the business is run. And that’s when a terrorist calling himself Bogart enters the picture. He sabotages the various businesses of Go Dong Hae industries, and frames the sisters for murder. Kimmy and Dora must find a way to get along as they try and save Go Dong Hae industries from the terrorist.
Like the second movie, this installment of the Kimmy Dora franchise adopts the elements of another genre of film. This time, it’s kind of a sci-fi spy thriller, the movie involving high-tech gear and villainous plots in the affairs of the sisters. And it doesn’t really work. A lot of resources have obviously been poured into the creation of this highly stylized world, but the foundation isn’t very good to begin with. The movie takes too long to get to the meat of the story, stalling itself with its insistence on goofy antics. The film tries to wring too much out of the opposite reactions of the sisters to the same situation. The joke is always the same: Kimmy is uptght and mean, and Dora is really dumb and sweet.
And since this is ostensibly a prequel, there’s no real chance of growth between the characters. And so the repetition quickly grows to be tedium, the characters stalled in one mode for the entirety of the film. One gets a sense that no one really wanted to make another Kimmy Dora movie. Though the production values are high, much of the film feels thrown off. It seems to be built around scenes meant to practice techniques, like the motion controlled compositing that makes it possible for the camera to be moving while there are two Eugene Domingos on screen. Those bits are certainly impressive, but it feels like the core of the movie is completely lost.
Eugene Domingo has always been broad as the sisters, but in the first movie she seemed to offer up hints of something deeper behind the loudness of her performance. But that isn’t the case here. She’s really playing it up as a cartoon, and while Domingo is still quite appealing in her broadness, it feels like a real waste of her formidable talents. The supporting cast equally squanders the talents of Joel Torre and Angel Aquino. Sam Milby proves yet again to be quite a physical performer, but the role mostly limits him outside of action-y moments.
Kimmy Dora: Ang Kiyemeng Prequel is a huge disappointment, even given how disappointing the sequel already was. When the first Kimmy Dora came out, I had written that it felt like a step in the right direction for comedy. The first movie was just as broad, but it seemed to really try to ground all that silliness in solid character work. Now the film feels like an obligation. At best, it is a technical run, the filmmakers trying out new techniques to use in later, better films. But we don’t need to see any of this.
My Rating:
