So It’s You digs up the hoary romcom premise of two people pretending to be together in order to make former lovers jealous. It’s worthy of an instant eyeroll, but it isn’t the cliché premise that ultimately sinks this movie. The film just does everything a bit awkwardly. It takes too long to even get the couple together. It overstuffs the plot with all manner of unnecessary incident. And it can’t decide on a tone. It is a patience-testing endeavor from start to finish, the film unable to make much of case for its protagonists’ eventual happiness.
Lira (Carla Abellana) was left at the altar by her fiancee Tony (JC de Vera). Cobbler Goryo (Tom Rodriguez) has just given up hope on getting back together with the mother of his child. The two meet by chance, and come to bond over their respective heartbreak. Goryo agrees to pose as Lira's boyfriend in hopes of making her now-married former fiancée jealous. Things get complicated when the two start falling in over for real, even as Lira continues to dream of reuniting with Tony.
The film takes longer than usual to get its primary characters to meet. Even with all that extra time allotted for setup, the film does a poor job of explaining why Lira is so in love with Tony. There's no tension in her eventual choice, since Tony never feels like a worthy option. Her continued pursuit of him (which happens to involve a lot of deception) makes Lira seem like a really terrible person. The movie becomes a case of the audience waiting around for the main character to do the right thing, despite nothing really keeping her from doing so.
The film also suffers from an awkward mix of really broad comedy and dead serious drama. At one point, the film reveals the harsh reality of a life-threatening disease. At another point, Lira trips and falls on the stairs. These two moments don't really seem to belong in the same movie, and yet here they are. Neither side emerges as particularly effective. The film would likely have been before had it just chosen one of these tones.
Carla Abellana tries her hand at a more extroverted performance. And to her credit, she really commits to the loudness of the character. But the actress never quite looks comfortable with the role. Tom Rodriguez is an affable presence on screen, and though he seems to have a limited set of tools at his disposal, he manages to get across the straightforward appeal of the character. The supporting cast mainly plays everything loudly, often to the detriment of whatever real sentiment the film might be trying to build.
So It's You takes a long time to get nowhere. It embellishes too much on a simple core of a story, adding unnecessary details that detract from the uncomplicated affection that grows between these two heartbroken people. As with so many local mainstream films, it tries too hard to be many things. It has to try to be funny. It has to try to be dramatic. It has to feel current, and thus make reference to social media. It has to follow all these imagined guidelines on what a mainstream romcom is supposed to be. Along the way, the core of the story is lost, and it just becomes another case of a movie asking audiences to root for a pairing that isn’t really worth cheering for.
My Rating:
