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p style=”text-align:center;”>MY EX AND WHYS (2017) Review
Directed by Cathy Garcia-Molina
Yes, Liza Soberano and Enrique Gil delivered what was wanted from them: romantic feels from start to finish and maybe slip some “hugot lines” here and there. And as director Cathy Garcia-Molina said, it was hard to make the two leads ugly because, they have the faces that can capture hearts. But the story felt forced that even the cheesiness of the film doesn’t work anymore.
My Ex and Whys tells the story of Cali (Soberano), a broken-hearted girl who turned her pain to literature by creating a blog called “The Bakit List.” As her blog got more and more attention, people are contacting her to attend “bloggers’ conference” for interviews and brands are starting to get her as an influencer. Gio (Gil) returns to her life and takes the name “DahilList” to counter or answer all of her blogs or tweets as they may look. And as the usual romantic comedies go, cat and dog turn soft when they reach a point where everything was okay, they were just being insensitive brats.
You don’t publicly state that men are naturally polygamous, nobody does that. But that statement isn’t surprising given that the film is torn presenting men as bad men and women as bad women in an unfair way. Even Cali’s “Bakit List” can be easily answered in a sensitive way.
Enrique Gil’s character Gio, grew up with a lot of men in his house, and cliched as it is, the behavior of men from being not loyal to their partners in an immoral way to having serious conversations turn into jokes are mostly the focus of their circle. Even their father, played by Joey Marquez, who was left by his wife for cheating, isn’t the best father figure there is, and that is acceptable at one point, but everything is obviously done that way to expose how polygamous a man can be, that even when Marquez gives Gil an advise, it feels wrong not walking the talk. So the audience will have this presumption or feel that his character shouldn’t be forgiven easily.
Cali, who’s with her mother and aunts because her dad left them for another woman (surprise?), acts like she knew everything about men, because of what her father did to her family and what Gio did to her. She blogs of why people are still falling in love even if in the end, men will most likely hurt you. One of her friends and one of her aunties are trying to make her believe otherwise or make her realize that not all men are the same. But she does not listen, so everything goes bad.
We live in the world where we protect ourselves from pain, but having people, friends and families around you makes things better. I guess that’s not the case for Cali. But as stubborn as she may be, she has a point. The story is just too one-sided though, that no one’s being really understanding and that will obviously lead to a toxic relationship which will end up bad, maybe that is what the story needed? Because fixing things will be their redemption? The film isn’t a fantasy film, it tries to tell stories of people who could’ve existed with us, in our world, in our time. But every story line was made without authenticity, every character was written for a purpose not accordingly .
My Ex and Whys is without a doubt charming. But it’s almost bad that these people doesn’t feel real even as fictitious characters, their conceptions about blogging and bloggers are stereotyped and insanely ridiculous that you might think they didn’t do their research. Was the film forced? Rushed? We don’t know. But the charms, decent acting from its stars and hugot lines are the only things we can get out of it.
2 OUT OF 5 STARS
“My Ex and Whys” is now showing in cinemas nationwide from Star Cinema. Rated PG by the MTRCB.
Omg. This is so true. I actually didn’t want to watch the movie, but my co-worker wanted to watch it and even said that she would treat us. But she didn’t. I enjoyed the 2-3 minute bloopers more than the two-hour movie. And I feel offended how the “The Bakit List” became famous when all she did was ask questions, exposing how bitter she was about love. She was even asked to write a book?! I also don’t like how Cali and Geo’s situations are always connected with their parents so that in the end their parents give them words of wisdom and inspiration. Well, I think this is true with Direk Cathy’s movies. I mean, it is not always the case. I wish Direk Cathy will explore more on how to end her movies without just recycling her previous movies.
In addition, the scene where Cali and Geo were looking for Lee’s fiance in S.Korea at night failed. Because the production team was lazy enough to orient the people that there was an on going show. Korean people were staring at them, wondering what was going on, and making it obvious that they were shooting. Some people were even steering away from the two because they were afraid they could disturb them or what.