Wang Fam is easily dismissed as yet another broad comedy from Wenn Deramas. But there is kernel of something really good in this movie. An enthusiastic cast brings life to a story of a family of aswang trying to hide their true nature from a gang of busybodies in Manila. That’s a fun comedic setup that occasionally bears fruit in this movie. Unfortunately, it shares time with a separate plot concerning villainous aswang with some sort of plan that will somehow bring about the end of the world or something. This other side of the film ultimately sinks the movie, causing it to feel lazy and overlong.
Once upon a time, Malou (Pokwang) was meant to be a virgin sacrifice to the queen of the aswang. But she fell in love with botanist Boo (Benjie Paras) and married him instead. In order to protect Boo from her family she turns him into an aswang before they run away together. Eighteen years later, she and Boo have a family, and are trying to find a way to live a normal life. They move to Boo's old house in the heart of Manila. Thanks to a serum of Boo's devising, they're able to deal with some of the disadvantages of being an aswang. But their new neighbors continue to be suspicious of them. Worse yet, Malou’s old relatives show up in the neighborhood, seeking revenge for the events of years ago.
The film is best when it’s just about an aswang family trying to pass for normal in a Manila neighborhood. When the film stays within these lines, it derives plenty of real humor from the way that newcomers and outsiders can be treated in our society. The film plays everything broad, but it moves briskly enough that the broadness is bearable. It rarely lingers too long on one of its jokes. It just keeps moving from one very silly gag to the next, much of it built on the characters being loud and a little dense. There are a few questionable choices here and there, but it’s more or less all in good fun.
But then the film blunders into the plot. Almost everything relating to the villains in this movie is utterly useless. The movie seems to treat these sequences as obligatory at best, and doesn’t imbue them with the same enthusiasm and energy given to the other scenes. And so, the villains arrive in town with no particular agenda. They idle in the city for a while doing nothing to further their goals, which are pretty vague anyway. Later, the villains basically have the Wang family defeated, but they just let them go. Because it isn’t time to end the movie yet.
These parts of the movie are really lazily assembled. The visual effects are shoddy, and the action this plotline brings isn’t worth the trouble. These scenes mostly serve to stretch out the runtime of this movie. There’s no reason that this film should run 110 minutes, but it does. It would have been a much tighter film if it concentrated on the stuff that it was actually interested in. The movie certainly gets the best out its cast when it is engaged with the material. Pokwang and Benjie Paras are reliable comedic performers. Andre Paras and Yassi Pressman prove to be enthusiastic performers who really commit to the silliness of the film.
Wang Fam really has its moments. Somewhere in the middle, it even finds a genuinely interesting dramatic dilemma concerning the family’s yearning to become human. But this falls by the wayside as it looks for a more conventional climax that has the characters facing off with the villains. And the film’s heart just isn’t into it. It gets lazy and uninteresting, and ends up giving the various conflicts unearned resolutions. This film is all the more frustrating because of how close it gets to actually being good. The pieces are already there. They just needed a little more effort to be put together.
My Rating:
