Two Films: My Amnesia Girl and Miss You Like Crazy

My Amnesia Girl (Cathy Garcia-Molina, 2010)

Miss You Like Crazy (Cathy Garcia-Molina, 2010)

My Amnesia Girl

This Holy Week I (finally) watched two of the most talked-about films from Star Cinema almost two years ago. Both films had Cathy Garcia-Molina at the helm and John Lloyd Cruz as lead actor. Toni Gonzaga and Bea Alonzo were the lead actresses: the former in My Amnesia Girl, the latter in Miss You Like Crazy. Honestly, I liked both films but I liked the one with Bea Alonzo more. But this doesn't mean these films will be in the list of the greatest Pinoy films.

That amnesia thing (as a defense mechanism) that the movie My Amnesia Girl used as premise is so interesting that it could have made the movie great. But the makers opted to make a movie so cheesy and easy to market. This I understand; after all the movie was made to rake money from hopeless romantic moviegoers. The script was practically a festival of pick-up lines, which, fortunately, didn't sound cheap and corny coming from effective and charismatic actors like John Lloyd Cruz and Toni Gonzaga. In my opinion, such pick-up lines mean only one thing: that they're crazily in love with each other. In this vein, I felt that there was an excess of such lines and I got bored at some point. In my head I was actually screaming "You have made your point, enough with these lines." Despite this, however, I found some lines witty and funny, but some pallid. 

Example: "Ulan ka ba? Kasi lupa ako, kahit ano gawin mo, sa akin ang bagsak mo." But there's a higher probability that the rain will hit the sea and most rains form over oceans. Ha ha ha. Kinulang ng imagination ang writer. 

And then there was this part of the voice over at the opening of the film: "Sabi sa census may 11 million na tao sa Metro Manila. Paano mo malalaman na nahanap mo na ang taong para sa iyo? Maaaring nakita mo na siya pero ..." Again the writer's imagination goes myopic. What if the right person for you is not from Metro Manila? He (or She) can be from Bohol or China or California or even Antarctica. Ha ha ha (uli).

Miss You Like Crazy

The theme of the other movie (Miss You Like Crazy) is practically the same as that of My Amnesia Girl's. In both films, the lead male character is quite sure of his love to the lead female character but is tentative on pursuing it. In both films, the lead male character abandons "the girl of his dreams," leaving her clueless,  and then he realizes later that he needs her so badly that he will move heaven and earth to win her back. Sounds familiar? Most, if not all, mainstream movies made by Star Cinema are rehash of this overused storyline. But between the two films, Miss You Like Crazy is a better movie than My Amnesia Girl. But both are far from great.

Rating:

My Amnesia Girl - 2.5/4.0

Miss You Like Crazy - 3.0/4.0

Note that these ratings are based on the film's genre.