Some witty wins in Wedding Tayo Wedding Hindi

There are some commercial films that have winner written all over it, and Wedding Tayo, Wedding Hindi is one of them. Between Eugene Domingo and Toni Gonzaga in lead comic roles, Wendell Ramos and Zanjoe Marudo as eye candy, and Jose Javier Reyes as writer-director, it’s difficult to see this as anything more than standard commercial comedy film fare. Enjoyable absolutely, but standard. Which would be a disservice to this film of course, because it actually tries to do more than just create something funny out of real life, or highlight the funny in what we know to be familiar. Wedding Tayo, Wedding Hindi was sold as a comedy about weddings and marriage in contemporary times; in truth it’s more than the usual day-in-the-life of a difficult marriage, or a woman all enamored by the thought of a wedding. Of course these things exist here too, but in Javier Reyes’ hands there’s less romance here and more real life, less a simple path to a happy-ever-after and more the arduous process of learning to compromise and sticking to one’s choices. That includes when, precisely because these are people that we’re choosing.

This is ultimately what’s in the story of cousins Precy (Eugene) and Belay (Toni), who begin the story at disparate points in their lives: the former in the throes of a marriage to a man who had remained unchanging and unambitious despite his growing family, the latter recently home from a stint as Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW) in Japan and ready to plan a wedding. The disparity is this plot’s main conflict, even as it’s obviously the individual crises of each woman as well. Precy’s disgust with her husband comes to a head when he loses her money to a pyramid scam, bringing her to leave home and children, and go through the first steps in legalizing the dissolution of her marriage. As the emotional and financial difficulty – which has its share of the funnies of course – dawns on her, she is faced with cousin Belay, all ready to get married, all excited about planning a wedding. Except that Belay is now also Maribel, ex-Japayuki with the look and gay lingo to show for it, a clear mismatch for her fiancée, a teacher in the public school she herself used to teach in. I will not go into how just or valid this over-the-top noisy portrayal of the balikbayan OFW is, but it sure seemed like too much for someone who was only in Japan for three years, and always knew that it was an end in itself. The premise of her leaving was a wedding to come home to, and in that sense this change in personality seemed illogical, if not too much too soon. Belay is a character that’s not clearly pinned down, her complexity not clearly defined. Which is really Javier Reyes deciding to toe the line with this character, mostly silencing what it was that Belay actually did in Japan as OFW, never mind that this would’ve provided the complexity this character needed in order for her to be more real, and maybe even bigger fodder for laughter, pained as that always is. Instead all we got was a babaeng bakla who’s more fag than hag, her voice always a pitch higher than everyone else’s, her high heels with very short shorts deemed enough characterization. But there’s obviously more to Belay than her clothes, and while this revelation happens, it’s dealt with as ambiguously as possible, as if her experience in Japan only superficially changed her, versus affecting her fundamental notions of self and other. This makes even less sense given the fact that it is this new self that wants a big wedding in Boracay, and who refuses to strike a compromise with her future mother-in-law even when it is obviously needed. It’s also this new self that would allow for her relationship to unravel. When this happens, Belay’s character just becomes this confusing and confused entity on screen who’s suddenly going back to Japan: so it was either marriage or continuing to care for family? It might be said that both are forms of entrapment that are dealt with in this movie in the most uncreative of ways. Good thing there was plenty here that was creatively funny, that hit at the heart of what women suffer through and are embroiled in when they fall in love and decide to get married, conservative mother-in-laws and mama’s boys included. In the end, Precy finds that there’s more to marriage than just wanting out when things get tough, and there’s plenty that a sincere apology can do coming from one’s husband. In the end, Belay’s happy ending does reveal itself to be about compromise and pure true love from the fiancé she had come home for, and no big wedding was required. At this point very few things were funny in this movie, but you really do tend to forgive it. Because in the end, what Wedding Tayo, Wedding Hindi actually truly had were its actors. And I don’t mean just Eugene who was wonderfully funny as expected, and Toni who can take an offbeat role and run away with it like no one else in her generation of actresses. I also mean Wendell Ramos as the lazy unapologetic husband who has the whole Pinoy macho characterization down pat, and Zanjoe Marudo as the public school teacher who had impeccable comedic timing even as he proved capable of being the sacrificing understanding fiancé who was in over his head. One wonderful aspect of this movie’s representation of the Filipino family was its portrayal of an eldest son as recovering addict (ably played by Teddy Corpus of the band Rocksteddy), who was deemed “doing well" because he was now only rolling a joint as the family went about their individual lives and conversations. It was in that last character that Javier Reyes’ magic lies, and Wedding Tayo, Wedding Hindi could’ve used more of that magic, more of the quiet comedy that we know him to deftly handle and create, where dialogue – and the lack of it – is comedy enough. Which is not to say this movie doesn’t work. It’s to say that the stage was set for something that could’ve been infinitely better, not just because it’s funnier, but because it’s more relevant. – YA, GMA News