Hayop Ka!

All that is good in this title is it's eye-catching art. Granted, I watched the English dub, so I could have missed a lot of untranslatable jokes throughout the movie, but it seemed that most of them are toilet humour and jokes for 12-year-olds anyway. The whole plot revolves around such trivial and beaten tropes that nothing in the movie strikes me as exciting or unexpected. This title could have tried to be anything else but the cheesy and unoriginal romcom that it is, and with the beautiful art direction it could be more mature and bring more to the table in terms of story and characters. The main plot doesn't grab any stars from the sky, nor does it even try to be original. My takeaway: I would love to see more projects by the animation team behind this movie, but in a title that will actually make me feel something.

When I stumbled upon the 2020 Tagalog animated movie "Hayop Ka!", I had no idea what I was getting myself into here. But I read the synopsis for it, and have to say that I was somewhat intrigued, as "Hayop Ka!" sounded like something definitely aimed at a more mature audience.

And I will say that writers Manny Angeles, Avid Liongoren and Paulle Olivenza definitely managed to put together a story and plot that was every bit as entertaining as it was enjoyable. So yeah, "Hayop Ka!" was a wholesome animated feature for a mature audience. And when I say mature audience I don't mean that it is XXX-rated, but merely that there were references and hits towards lewd nature.

The art style in "Hayop Ka!" was strange, but enjoyably so. Initially I was a bit taken aback by the art style, but it quickly grew on me and I came to enjoy the art style that they used here because it was definitely complimenting the story and the message of the movie.

With "Hayop Ka!" being an animated movie, a proper voice cast ensemble is a must. And luckily they did have that here. While I am not familiar with Tagalog cinema, then I wasn't familiar with a single voice here. But I will say that the voice acting was good and definitely gave the characters life on the screen.

I found "Hayop Ka!" to be an enjoyable surprise of a movie, and definitely is an animated movie that I would recommend for a mature audience that enjoys light-hearted and funny stories. The fact that "Hayop Ka!" was told as an animation wasn't really a hindrance in any way.

My rating of director Avid Liongoren's "Hayop Ka!" lands on a six out of ten stars.

Really impressed w/ the visuals and animation. Story could work a bit better tho.

Although the visuals looked so good, the story doesn't reach the Steven Spielberg storyline, but it could have some improvements

The Movie is pretty good, the dialogue is very witty, and very Filipino. Some or most of the Jokes I'm not sure Foreigners will appreciate as much, like when Nimfa said, "sa Pares pa talaga nag propose", LOL.

The Characterizations were also pretty good by everybody in the Cast. The Plot is also very Filipino, like Nimfa supporting her Sister's Education, etc. and it is not as predictable as you might think, there are some surprising twists in the Story also.

Stick around for the Credits, the rest of Nimfa's Story is also shown in Story Board format. And I also loved Empoy's rendition (I think it was Empoy) of Jose Mari Chan's "Beautiful Girl" at the end. Overall it is a Must Watch for me.