Last year’s My Little Bossings was a terrible movie. It reflected little of the actual talent involved in the production, as the movie often gave way to blatant product placement. My Big Bossing takes a completely different approach. It takes the combination of Ryzza Mae Dizon and Vic Sotto and places them in three different stories, each handled by a different filmmaker. While the total result is still not that great, the film features glimmers of inspiration that simply wasn't available in the previous film.
In Sirena (directed by Tony Reyes), Jessa (Ryzza Mae Dizon) makes a wish to a crone to become a mermaid. Her godfather (Vic Sotto) must deal with the consequences when the wish inexplicably comes true. This segment is most like the typical Vic Sotto movie. He’s called “bossing,” women fawn over him, and he’s praised for being terrible to other people. The segment offers a moral, but doesn’t really bother telling the story that would earn that lesson. The conflict is resolved anticlimactically, with the characters having to do very little to solve their mermaid problem. Of the three segments, this one feels the most thrown together. It feels as if somebody just thought it would be funny to dress Dizon up as a mermaid and went no further.
Marlon Rivera’s Taktak casts Dizon as Angel, a child with the power to channel the dead. Sotto plays Vince, a TV reporter out to prove that Angel is a fraud. Marian Rivera stars as producer Clarissa, who believes in Angel and wants Vince to believe in her, too. Sotto gets a chance to stretch his acting muscles here. As Vince, he gets to play cynical and haunted, and the actor proves to still have some chops. This is a pretty solid segment. Its edges are a little rough, but it manages to tell a pretty effective story that combines effective comedy with dramatic content. It also benefits from the presence of a yelling Marian Rivera. This is always a bonus, no matter what the context.
In Prinsesa, directed by Joyce Bernal, Dizon is Victoria, the rightful heir to the kingdom of Bougainvillea. She has been raised as a peasant to keep her safe from the plans of her ambitious aunt. Sotto plays an exiled court doctor, who has kept the princess hidden away for years. This is the best looking of the three segments, with credible production work providing a solid foundation for the excess of visual effects. The story is just okay. It’s a little weirdly structured, with the story beginning somewhere in the middle, and then going back to the start before catching up and going on from there. And it’s never really clear what the characters are meant to be doing. The segment is forced to manufacture urgency in its final, the villains suddenly revealing their convoluted plan, while the heroes are forced to wait for a miracle to happen.
My Big Bossing is certainly an improvement over last year’s edition. It’s not great by any means, but it does feel as if a lot more effort was put into it. And that’s all we can really ask for. These are talented people involved in this production, and when they apply themselves the result is always more than watchable. It’s still a pretty mixed bag, however, and the total length of the movie still makes it difficult to recommend. Taktak is a really solid short, though, and it might be worth it just to see Sotto trying something a little different.
My Rating:
